by Kevin Brooks
She didn’t answer, just glanced over my shoulder. I turned around to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there. I turned back to the girl.
“Candy,” I repeated. “Does she live here?”
“Who’re you?” she said. Her voice was quiet, clipped, with a foreign accent. I couldn’t tell what it was—Russian, maybe…East European…
“My name’s Joe,” I told her. “I’m a friend of Candy’s…We met up a couple of times. Is she here?”
The girl opened the door a little wider. “Friend?”
I nodded.
“Boyfriend?”
“Well…” I said, “I don’t know…not really. I just—”
“Kanagaroo?”
“What?”
“Zoo?”
“Oh, yeah…the zoo…yeah, that’s right…we went to the zoo. Candy showed me the kangaroo. Did she tell you—”
“There,” the girl said, pointing along the hallway at the last door on the left. “She hurts.”
“Hurts?”
The girl shrugged. “You shouldn’t come here.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged again, then stepped back and quietly closed the door in my face. I thought about knocking again or even calling out to her, but there didn’t seem much point. She’d told me all I needed to know.
And more.
Imagine: You’ve spent all day traipsing around London, lost in a maze of chaos, trying to find a hidden illusion; you’ve been living on hope, ignoring reality, fueled only by feelings you don’t understand. You’ve been looking for a dream, never truly believing you’d find it, but now—incredibly—you have. It’s right there in front of you—just behind that off-white door. It’s there…
She’s there.
Behind the door.
Imagine that.
Candy’s in there…
All you have to do is raise your hand and knock…
That’s all.
Just raise your hand…
I couldn’t do it. My arm wouldn’t move. It was dead, senseless…unresponsive. It belonged to someone else. For a minute or two, all I could do was stand there in front of the door, staring at the flaking paint, the grimy panels, the ill-fitting lock…my hands hanging down at my sides…my head throbbing…my body burning…hot…cold…inside out…sick with too many things. Excitement. Fear. Anxiety. Pain. Passion. Hope.
Everything.
Nothing.
“Candy?” I whispered.
Too quiet.
I tried again. “Candy?”
It was still too quiet, but somehow the sound of my voice brought my arm back to life and I reached up and knocked on the door.
“Candy?” I called out. “Are you in there? It’s Joe…”
There was no reply. I put my ear to the door and listened. Nothing at first…then something…a faint rustling…a creak…a single footstep. Then silence again. I knocked once more.
“Candy…please…open the door.”
This time I definitely heard her. Light footsteps, moving slowly toward me, toward the door. I stepped back—I don’t know why…It just seemed the natural thing to do. I stepped back and put my hands in my pockets. Again, I don’t know why I put my hands in my pockets. I just did.
The door opened…
And there she was—the imagined face in all its reality: pale, pained, bruised, and beaten. One of her eyes was blackened and her left wrist was swollen and bandaged.
“Candy,” I breathed. “What happened—”
“I can’t talk to you,” she said weakly. “You have to go…”
“I’m not going anywhere. Look at you…your face…”
“It’s nothing,” she said, brushing at the ugly swelling around her eye. “I’m all right. Please, Joe…just go…leave me alone. You’ll only make things worse.”
“I won’t.”
“You will…believe me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere until you talk to me.”
“I can’t…”
I didn’t reply. I just stood there, staring into her eyes, letting her see my determination. I wasn’t leaving. She could shut the door if she wanted to. She could lock it, bolt it, nail it shut…She could do whatever she liked. But I still wasn’t going anywhere.
She looked back at me, nervously chewing her lip.
I said, “The sooner you let me in, the sooner I’ll be gone.”
She closed her eyes for a moment—her face darkened with sadness—then, without looking at me, she stepped back and opened the door.
It wasn’t a flat, it was just a room. And it wasn’t even much of a room. There was a double bed, a wardrobe, a mirrored dressing table, a few shelves, one or two books…a cheap CD player on the floor…clothes and towels piled all over the place. There was a beaded doorway in the far wall that led into a small bathroom, but I couldn’t see a kitchen anywhere, nor any kitchen equipment—no food, no fridge, no cooker. No television. No ornaments, no pictures…
Nothing for living.
It was just somewhere to exist.
I blinked and rubbed my eyes, squinting into the light. The curtains were closed and the room was lit with a dim red glow from a heavy cylindrical lamp on the floor.
“Don’t say anything,” Candy said, sitting down gingerly on the bed. “Please…just don’t say anything.”
The bed was a mess—tangled sheets, scrunched-up pillows, a bedside cabinet strewn with all kinds of debris. I went over to the dressing table and sat down on a hard-backed chair. The surface of the dressing table was covered with bottles and tubs and jars and tubes…bits of foil…plastic wrap…matches…cigarette lighters…packs of painkillers…
“I couldn’t tell you,” Candy said.
I turned around and looked at her. She was sitting cross-legged, leaning slightly to one side, resting her hand on her hip…as if trying to relieve a pain. Her hair was loose and she was wearing a long white nightgown. The gown looked old—ivory white, thin and lacy…thin enough to see that she wasn’t wearing anything else. The outline of her body whispered under the cloth.
I lowered my eyes.
She said, “I wanted to tell you…honestly…”
“Tell me what?” I said.
“Come on, Joe—what do you think? All this…” She waved her hand around the room. “What I am…what I do…”
I raised my eyes and looked at her. “Why did he beat you up? Was it because of me?”
She shrugged. “You…me…it doesn’t really matter. I know the rules—I’ve only got myself to blame.” She reached over to the bedside cabinet, wincing slightly, and rummaged through the mess. She found a cigarette and lit it. “He doesn’t usually go this far,” she said, grinning through the cigarette smoke. “I think he just got carried away.”
“Carried away?” I said incredulously. “Look what he’s done to you…How can you let him do something like that?”
“Let him?” she said, shaking her head. “God, you really don’t get it, do you? You really don’t know what it’s like.”
“So tell me.”
“Why? What difference will it make?” She flicked cigarette ash into an empty Coke can, then lifted her eyes and looked right into me. “I’m a whore, Joe. I go with men for money. I give the money to Iggy. He gives me drugs. That’s all there is to it.”
“And that’s what you want, is it?”
“That’s how it is. What I want doesn’t come into it.”
“What do you want?”
She stared at me, her eyes pooled with tears. “I want you to go. Get out of here. Go home. Don’t get involved, Joe…please…just go. You can’t do anything…”
She was crying now.
I went over and sat down next to her on the bed. She sniffed and wiped her nose. I took the cigarette from her hand, dropped it in the Coke can, then put my arm around her shoulders.
“Please…” she snuffled, “it’s not worth it…”
“Yes, it is,” I said, drawing h
er close.
She rested her head on my shoulder. I could feel the wetness of her tears on my neck.
“He’ll kill you,” she said quietly.
I looked into her eyes and smiled. “He’ll have to catch me first.”
She didn’t smile back. She just looked at me for a moment, her tears still flowing, then she breathed out softly and kissed me.
The touch of her body.
The heat of her breath.
Her comfort.
My wonder.
The world in our eyes.
It was more than enough for both of us.
We talked then—both of us lying on our backs, on the bed, staring up at the ceiling…just talking. It felt OK. Nice and simple. Like two little kids, lying in the grass, staring up at the ever-blue sky…nothing to worry about…nothing to fear…
“Where’s Iggy gone?” I asked her.
“Out.”
“Is he coming back?”
“You wouldn’t be here if he was. How did you find me, anyway?”
“Very nice, thanks,” I replied.
“I didn’t mean that.”
“I know.”
I told her how I’d walked around King’s Cross, hoping to find her, how I’d eventually spotted Iggy and followed him, then waited in the park and tricked my way inside by helping the black woman with her bags.
“That’s Bamma,” Candy said.
“What?”
“Bamma—the woman with the bags. She’s called Bamma. She does the cleaning and shopping and stuff. She’s all right. She won’t say anything.”
Shadows drifted on the ceiling above me—streetlight shadows, window shadows, the shadowed lines of metal bars—and I remembered all the weird stuff I’d thought about earlier when I was staring at the bars from outside: the chaos, the colors, the nameless shapes…
I didn’t want to think about it.
“How’s your wrist?” I asked Candy. “Is it broken?”
“No, just sprained, I think.” She cautiously flexed her fingers. “It’s all right…”
“What about the rest of it?”
“Rest of what?”
I sat up and moved my hand toward her hips, where—through the sheerness of her nightgown—I could see her bruised and battered skin. The bruises looked like thunderclouds—blue-black, purple, mustard yellow.
She flinched away from my hand.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right…I was just…It’s nothing. It looks a lot worse than it is.”
I sat there in silence for a while, gazing without shame at Candy—her hair adrift on the pillow, the rings in her ears, glinting in the low red light…her necklace, her neck, her slender fingers gripping a twist of the sheet…
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” I said to her.
“What?”
“Pretend that you’re OK, that everything’s fine. You don’t have to hide things from me.”
“I’m not,” she said quietly. “I’m hiding them from myself. It’s the only way…”
“No, it’s not.”
She sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like, Joe. You don’t understand.”
“I might if you told me.”
She rolled over onto her side and looked up at me. I could feel the intensity in her eyes as she gazed deep inside me, looking for answers. Could she trust me? Did she want to? Was it worth it?
“Promise me something,” she said.
“What?”
“Don’t get involved. I’ll tell you as much as I can, but only if you promise to keep yourself out of it. I don’t want you trying to do anything for me—all right?”
I nodded.
She gave me a doubtful look. “I mean it, Joe. You can’t get involved.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah…”
“Say it.”
“All right—I promise. OK?”
Another look, this one touched with a fleeting sadness, then she took a deep breath, rolled onto her back, and started talking.
This is what she told me:
It all started about four years ago. She’d always been a good-looking girl, the kind of girl that mothers are proud of and fathers feel the need to protect, but when she was about twelve or thirteen she’d suddenly blossomed into the kind of girl that men can’t resist, and that’s when the trouble began.
“I’m not bragging about my looks,” she told me. “I’m just being honest. I know what I look like. I’m pretty. I know it now, and I knew it then.”
At first, it didn’t cause her any problems. Why should it? Everyone likes a pretty girl. And she was smart, too. Intelligent, popular, good at sports. She had a more than comfortable home, never wanted for anything, and for the most part she got on reasonably well with her parents. Her father was the managing director of a multinational IT company, so he wasn’t at home as much as he might have been, and her mother had a few emotional problems…but, all in all, things weren’t too bad.
But then the jealousy started.
“I didn’t even notice it at first,” Candy explained. “I used to get on all right with all the other girls at school…I didn’t have any real close friends, but there was a gang of us who used to hang around together, and that was OK most of the time. We didn’t do all that much…You know, we’d talk about boys, who we fancied, what we’d do, what we wouldn’t…that kind of thing. It was fine. No problems. Most of it was just talk, anyway. Sometimes we’d all go out to a local club together, and occasionally one of us might get off with someone for an hour or so, but it never changed anything between us. It didn’t affect how we were with each other. Do you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
She went on. “It never ends there, though, does it? It always has to get serious. Boys start ringing you up, asking you out. Men start looking at you with different eyes. You start doing things, going to nice places…and you think it’s great. It is great. It’s exciting. You love it. And because you love it, you want to tell all your friends about it. But when you do, instead of loving it with you, they throw it back in your face. They don’t like you doing stuff they’re not doing. It makes them feel bad. So they call you a liar…They laugh at you. They reject you. And it’s all so sudden. One minute they like you…the next minute they hate you. You’re not with them anymore. You’re different. You’re trying to be better than them. Or worse. Flashing your tits around, wiggling your bum, begging for it…you’re a slut, a tart, a whore…”
She paused and lit a cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into her lungs, holding it there, then angrily breathing it out.
“It was horrible, Joe…the things they said…the other girls. The way they treated me…it really hurt. I cried myself to sleep almost every night. It’s stupid, I know…I shouldn’t have let it bother me, but it did. It still does.”
She lay there quietly for a while, staring at nothing, twisting a knotted tissue in her hands, and then, with a funny little gulp, she started crying again. I put my hand on her shoulder and let her weep. I’m not sure if it helped very much, but after a few minutes she wiped her nose, dried her tears, lit another cigarette, and went on with her story.
“I don’t know how it happened,” she told me, “but everything suddenly changed. No one liked me anymore. Everyone started picking on me—the girls at school, the teachers, even my parents…going on at me all the time, whatever I did…I couldn’t do anything right. If I went out with boys, I was a tart; if I didn’t, I was frigid. If I worked hard, I was a swot; if I didn’t, I was stupid. If I dressed up, I was easy; if I dressed down, I was a tramp. And it just got worse and worse. It got so bad I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t know what I was doing. In the end, I just gave up. I suppose I thought that if everyone hated me, I might as well hate myself, too. So I started doing things to make me hate myself—hanging around with the wrong kind of people, drinking myself stupid, staying out all night, sleeping around…” She took a l
ong drag on her cigarette, then stabbed it out in the ashtray. “Anyway,” she said, “it was around then I met Iggy. I’d gone to this club in London with some people I barely knew, and I was whacked out of my head on something, and they’d gone off and left me…and this creepy old guy was bothering me, trying to get me to go somewhere with him, and then Iggy suddenly appears…just walks up, cool as you like, and whispers in the creepy guy’s ear, and the next thing I know the creepy guy’s gone and Iggy’s sitting down next to me, asking me if I’m all right. God, he was so smooth. Nice clothes, nice manners…clean and kind and caring.” She rubbed her forehead. “The thing is, he was nice. Charming, polite, funny…and he didn’t try anything, either. Kept his hands to himself, never touched me…he didn’t even try to chat me up. Just talked to me. Asked me all about myself. And he listened to me…that was the thing. I couldn’t believe it. No one had listened to me for months. Then, after I’d jabbered away for hours, he gave me a lift back home—drove me all the way back to Heystone in his shiny black BMW, dropped me off at the end of the street, and said good night.”
She paused then, her eyes lost in thought, drifting back over the memories…and I just sat there, looking down at her, studying the landscape of her face: the flesh of her lips, her nose, her eyelids, the pretty pink curl of her ears…
“Excuse me,” she said, getting up off the bed. “I won’t be a minute—just going to the bathroom.”
She walked around the bed, picked up something from the dressing table, then slipped through the beaded doorway into the bathroom. I watched the beads, swinging in her wake, moving to the shape of her passing body, and I remembered the way she’d walked away from me in the café at the zoo—with no vanity, no pretense, no frivolity…walking with a purpose…either not knowing, or not caring, that I was watching her.
Just like now.
Getting what she needed.
I guessed it didn’t make any difference to her. She was simply getting what she needed, and that’s all there was to it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand it. It didn’t matter that I didn’t like it. That’s how it was. What I liked or what I wanted didn’t come into it. So I just sat there, looking around the room, thinking about things, listening to the secret sounds coming from the bathroom—the creak of taps, the rattle of pipes, the rustle of plastic and foil, the click of a cigarette lighter…
