PAPERCUT

I started with paper planes. Folds and tears, carefully scoring along the dotted lines. It progressed to swans and cranes, boats and buildings, snowflakes and sea creatures that swirled overhead — legs and tendrils dangling on white string.

Origami. Even the word had folds and edges. I loved the sound and smell of paper. The softness of it. And its sharp edges.

I was folding paper for my daughter’s birthday party, busy fashioning a hundred tiny insects. She was almost a year old and insects seemed to be all that held her interest. I certainly didn’t. I was folding their tiny wings and stings when I became aware of the sound. Shrill, thin, insistent as a pin prick. Notifications. I followed it to my wife’s laptop and found the screen ablaze. Email, internet, messenger, and more — all trilling in their tiny voices. I was already turning away from them, disinterested, when my brain registered what they’d actually said. The letters were burned there at the back of my consciousness,

K I L L E R

I swung back. Stooped over the laptop and peered at the screen, overly bright in my widened eyes. I was careful not to click. I didn’t open others’ mail, not even my wife’s. But I stared instead. Waves of hate. White hot hate. Venom, vitriol. Volcanic in its bursts. People online were wishing terrible things on her, on me, on her family. Doom, damnation, and death threats. There were reams of it to read. Each rolling wave of it broke and revealed a new message, always worse than the last. Bullied. My wife was being bullied online.

I staggered back to my seat. Blinking away the burning letters of it, now seared in my subconscious. But a few moments more and a prickling truth began to dawn. It crawled up my spine and spread thin fingers. I realised what I’d read. The messages were so bright in my vision that I could still read them clearly, again and again. And I did.

I folded the paper insect. Turned it in my fingers as the text turned over in my mind. “She was the type of person who made people jealous,” I mused. “She makes people jealous and that’s all it is. Just plain jealousy.”

But in spite of my best efforts, I remembered what I’d read. It became impossible to unsee, only coming into sharper focus the more I looked away. It wasn’t jealousy, it was an anniversary.

…20 years since her death

I folded the paper again. Twisted it this time. A flurry of tiny paper insides cascaded over my fingers. My wife was not being bullied online. Another twist. Another coiling burst of paper seams.

My darling wife — the mother of my one year old — once bullied someone to death.

She’d always had a way with words. That’s what they said. A speaker, writer, poet… puppet master. She’d always been able to get people to do what she wanted, and I was no exception. When we’d met at the pool she’d asked me for a towel. My towel. The only towel. And I gave it to her. Accepted it back, sopping wet. I walked home still thinking about her.

We were married the next year and our daughter followed the year after. I was looking at our baby as I continued folding the paper. The action was almost automatic now, and not as distracting as I would have liked. When I bathed the baby, dried her with the towel, I was still thinking of that heatwave and the London lido. Orange ice lollies and the balloon-screech of inflatable arm bands. In some ways, she was really very ordinary. Until you got up close. Saw the depth of her hazel eyes, the auburn in the hair you thought was brown. Something clipped and sharp in the way she spoke. Nothing like that softness on the surface. She reminded me of paper. In one way or another, everyone did. Frail, fragile, fine to the touch; or else robust and thick. But always malleable and still marked by all that had touched it before. In my mind, people were like paper.

Twenty years ago, long before I knew her, my wife — with her auburn hair, hazel eyes, and way with words — once bullied someone to death. There was no other way I could put it. To myself or to anyone else. Once I’d formed the phrase it turned and tumbled incessantly in my mind, gathering more as it rolled.

I found out that day across a series of social media posts. My perfect wife in her perfect pictures was bombarded with comments that blamed her for the death of a young girl. They all accused her of callousness, cruelty; and as I watched her now — baby blue apron and a strand of hair falling across her face as she iced a cake for our baby girl — I told myself it was impossible. But my memory was calling to me, in a voice so low and mournful that for a time it was possible to ignore. But it grew deeper, more insistent, and finally took startling form. I was forced to watch.

The memory was of a book signing. That same heatwave in the city. We’d gone to see an author she loved but the line was long, the heat was tiring. At a desk ahead, with glasses pushed up so high on his head that they splayed his hair, the author was tirelessly signing. My wife moved from foot to foot in her yellow dress. Weary, impatient, theatrical sighs. When we finally reached him, the author signed, mumbled something forgettable and waved us on. It was all he had the energy for and I understood. But I heard her proclaim, just in case there was any doubt about how disappointing she’d found the experience: “They say never meet your heroes!”

What I saw on his face was for a split second or less. A twitch, like the tweak of pain from a plucked hair or a paper cut. A small blade had found and struck him. A painful little nick, deeper than it seemed. For that brief moment, his expression crumpled in shame. Then the polite smile returned. The pen continued to scratch his signature. He moved on, and we moved away. “Shall we get a lemonade?” My wife said. I tried to smile.

The next memory came on the back of the other. It writhed, twisted, and collapsed into view. A neighbour of ours. At the last house we used to live. Shuffling into her front garden with a jug of fruit punch and glasses of clinking ice. We were only returning a parcel, or some other innocuous task that forced a visit and conversation. I was tense as a taut wire. Our neighbour was talkative, old-fashioned, proud to be both. Telling us some endless and embarrassing story about her daughter-in-law whom she disliked. I wasn’t following it until the end when our neighbor concluded of her daughter-in-law, “In any case,” — and with a knowing hand gesture — “She drinks.”

“I can see why.” My wife shot a disdainful glance at the the house itself. Peeling paint and plaintive pink flowers on the porch. Our neighbour actually smirked at first, thinking she was in on the joke. And then that prickling dawn of realisation came. I always saw it after my wife spoke. That uncomfortable awareness of something you could’t quite describe. The casual cruelty of it. I saw her look down, just briefly. Smooth out her apron, surreptitiously cover a stain with one hand.

When we left, I looked at the pink flowers again. Sagging now, and swaying sadly in the breeze.

. . .

I was scrolling. Voraciously now. I’d opened the messages and no longer cared about getting caught. “You’re caught,” I thought petulantly, response at the ready. “You’re the one who’s caught.”

It was 20 years since the death of Heather Boyd, I read. But who was Heather Boyd? A few more clicks and I had a sad and solemn answer.

I landed on a photograph of a girl in a faded tracksuit. Small glasses and a mop of wavy dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. For a time I thought I was looking at a grown woman. It was something in the posture and the darkness of the eyes. Someone on whom the world had already weighed heavy. But I saw in the caption: she was fifteen years old. In the background was a gaggle of girls, more polished and lively than Heather in the foreground. A pair of stark and familiar hazel eyes peered back at me. Over Heather’s left shoulder was my wife. Fifteen years old, white summer dress and sandals. A friend at the time. But even in the image the power dynamic was clear. Heather was in awe of her. Staying close, nervous, but excited to even be in the same picture. Both smiling. My wife’s was easy and practiced. Heather’s was hollow. Even in that faded focus it was a damaged and degraded face.

I scrolled on. Someone had posted a video of the local news. Local news from the time of her death. It was her father onscreen. I found myself pressing play.

A reporter was mid-sentence, “…Blame her for your daughter’s death?”

“I do. I have to. I saw those messages.”

“She encouraged your daughter to commit suicide?”

“Yes.” A moment passed. Then —

“No, it… I don’t know. She was cleverer than that.” His hands clenched into fists. He pawed briefly at his shirt as he searched for the words in the dark and grief.

“She just always knew how to make things worse. Just a little bit worse each time. She told Heather that things would never get better, that they only got worse. Things about her appearance, how lonely she was, how silly her interests were. They were little things. Just the little things. But sometimes the little things get really big.”

His chest heaved once, swallowing back a sob. Then he shrugged.

“She wasn’t strong enough.”

I recognised it immediately. Like an instrument playing off-key that is suddenly tuned. The pattern. It was death by a thousand tiny cuts. Befriend and belittle. Draw in and dismantle. It was so familiar and truthful that it was now screaming at me. Erupting from the dark earth where it had long been buried in my mind. She was always quick and cutting and sharp. But more than that. She was cruel. The reason people loved her and laughed at her jokes was the same reason others were wary. I knew it then and I’d always known it. My own wife was cruel.

“And she always pretended to forget her name,” The father looked angry then. Hot tears were forming. “Helen, Hannah, Hettie… Her name was Heather.” Then again, barely audible, “Her name was Heather.”

CLICK. I closed the laptop. For a few moments the video kept playing. By the time it stopped I had left the room.

I took the baby and a handful of the paper insects to the kitchen. I cradled both carefully. I knew from experience that something can be beautifully constructed but eerily fragile. Tug on the wrong part and it simply falls apart. Paper and people, I thought.

I sat. My wife continued to busy herself and I watched her, hoping for an insight, an opportunity. Something that irritated me enough to start an argument and confront her. But nothing came. She glanced up, smiled, glanced away again. More busywork.

I looked at my daughter instead, who only looked at the paper insects on the table. She was somebody’s daughter, I thought, folding the paper again. She was somebody’s daughter. What if my own daughter becomes like —

Ouch. A sharp tweak, like a plucked violin string. My finger opened in a slim scarlet smile. It hurt. I jammed it in my mouth and sucked. I noticed two piercing hazel eyes watching me, wincing at the pain of my tiny wound.

The eyes belonged to my daughter.

She laughed.