‘We have to talk!’ she commanded, but Ben was gone, down three flights and out of the door like a rat down a hole.
‘You could at least have helped this lady with her bags. Aaaahggh!’ he heard her scream as he opened the front door and exited the building. Ben ran on. The houses and people and cars flashed by. It had been the hardest thing he had ever done.
Afterwards at home, he was sorry about how he’d done it. He’d only been thinking about how to make it easy on himself, when it was her he should have worried about. She’d been upset. Now he thought about it, hadn’t there been tears on her face as she ran after him? He’d thought at the time she was after his blood, but maybe she just wanted to talk it through. Just blurting it out and running – it wasn’t very clever.
He felt too jangled to give her a ring that day. He’d get her at school the next day, and say he was sorry he’d handled it so badly.
But he didn’t see her the next day, which was odd; he nearly always managed to bump into her in the corridor. Thursday lunch time there was a rehearsal for the school play, in which he was as usual helping with the lighting. He was feeling awful for still not ringing her, and dreaded having to see her, but she wasn’t in that day. It was announced at break that she was ill.
Ben knew at once; it was him. He’d done her in. But how? Headache, heartache or death, he had no way of knowing. Fantasies spiralled in his mind; the beast slaughtered in her lair. But she wasn’t a beast. She was a person, someone who loved him and whom he had once adored; and he had hurt her.
He was still too scared to ring her that evening and she wasn’t at school again the next day. By then he felt utterly craven, weak with failure to do the right thing. He swore he’d do it the next night, but when he got home that Friday there was a call for him.
She wasn’t angry any more, he could hear that. Her voice was flat, wounded. She was sorry. She’d had a bad day, it came at the wrong time. Of course if that’s the way he felt then he was doing the right thing. Could she just see him one more time? She didn’t want to end like that, in a fight on the landing. Just this one thing for me. Don’t let it end like this for me.
There were no signs of tears or bullying but his heart was going like a dinosaur again. He stared at the phone in his hand suspiciously, but he couldn’t say no. It wasn’t too much to ask, not much at all, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his head that it was some sort of trap.
33
ben
The door was ajar. I knocked and she said, ‘Come in,’ in a little voice. I went in and she was sitting on an armchair with her hands resting on the arms looking very pale.
‘Hi,’ I said, and she said, ‘Hi,’ back and looked at me with a funny crooked smile. She seemed embarrassed. Something was wrong with her but I couldn’t work it out just yet. She looked down very briefly as if she couldn’t help herself and then looked away to one side. My eyes went down. The armchair had a brown cover on. I took a few steps towards her but she jerked her head back as if I was going to hurt her even if I tried to be gentle. Then I noticed that the chair arms were all red.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, and she pulled a funny face as if she wasn’t bothered. I walked over and poked the material. It was damp. It took another moment to sink in. Where was the colour coming from? Then I saw. It was coming from her wrists.
She’d slit her wrists.
I think I said, ‘Jesus!’ and I ran for the phone to dial 999. She called after me but all I was bothered about was getting some help before she bled to death, just bled to death sitting there waiting for me. There were splashes of blood on the floor next to me and the phone was smeared with it. I got up to nine nine when she came up behind and pressed the button down to cut me off.
‘What are you doing?’ I begged.
‘I don’t need an ambulance. You can drive me.’
‘Drive you?’
‘It’ll be quicker.’
‘Will it?’
‘Yes.’ She shook her head and almost laughed. ‘Don’t worry, Ben. I’m not going to die.’
‘How do you know?’ I asked but even as the words came out of my mouth, I realised why. ‘You’ve done it before,’ I accused her. She’d never told me, but I’d seen the thin white scars on her wrists. I stood there with the phone in my hand wondering what to do, because I’d’ve very much preferred to call an ambulance and let them take her away from me.
‘I can’t drive,’ I reminded her.
‘You’ve got your provisional, I’ll be sitting next to you.’ She walked to the door. ‘Come on. It won’t take long.’ She waved her hand at me and winced, and I could see the blood trickling out.
I was so scared I hardly knew what I was doing. I was scared of her, scared of the hospital, scared of the police, because … because you know why this had happened, don’t you? I’d done it to her.
We got down to the car and set off. I was trembling, I could see my hands shaking on the wheel. ‘Why did you do that?’ I asked her.
‘Because I’m stupid.’ She sat very still, holding her wrists on her lap, looking demurely down at them. She’d wrapped them in some blue-checked tea towels and the blood was slowly seeping through. After a little while she turned her head away from me and stared out of the side window. I kept having to brake hard and I was stalling and accelerating too quickly, and every time I did it, she stiffened up and pulled a face. She never said another word all the way there.
They made us wait for ages. A nurse came to have a quick look but there didn’t seem to be any rush. I tried to speak to Ali but she just shook her head and said, ‘No.’ They left us waiting there for ages before they took her in and left me sitting there on my own.
‘I’m not going to die,’ she’d said. So what’s the point of cutting your wrists if you’re not going to die? I thought, I hope someone knows what’s going on because I haven’t got a fucking clue.
I sat there watching people come and go. There was this whole series of weird accidents coming in and out and I kept getting fits of the giggles. At one point the door burst open and this fat old Sikh man came in, clutching his bollocks and yelling, ‘Nurse! Nurse! Oh, my God, oh, my God!’ and these three younger blokes, his sons maybe, came banging in behind him and started prowling about. Poor bloke must have been in terrible pain, but I couldn’t help it, I just started laughing. I had to run outside to hide it. It took me ages to calm down. Then this kid came in with his mum, and he had both hands bandaged. She was tiny, he was about eight and he was only a little smaller than she was, and they both had this funny waddling walk and they looked just like a pair of penguins coming into the waiting room. I felt like I was on some sort of drug. But then things got boring and I just sat there, waiting for ages until they asked me in to see her.
She was lying on a bed with her wrists bandaged up, smiling weakly at me.
‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Are you going to be all right?’
She nodded. ‘Stupid thing to do.’ She shrugged.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you …’
‘It’s not your fault. You weren’t to know what a stupid cow I am, were you?’
‘What did the doctors say?’ I asked her.
She laughed. ‘They said, next time I should use sleeping pills if I want to kill myself. They said I’d stand a better chance of being successful.’
‘They said that? They said that to you?’
‘It’s too hard to kill yourself by slitting your wrists, the arteries are too deep.’
I was outraged. How could they say things like that? They were supposed to be sympathetic. ‘We should complain,’ I began, but she shook her head.
‘They were just angry because they had some real accidents to deal with.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Not a little pretend case like mine.’
They brought us both a cup of tea and then I drove her home.
Back at the flat she asked him to stay with her. He rang his parents and told them he was staying over with a friend. They
were surprised but didn’t try to stop him. He opened tins of spaghetti and heated it up for supper and they went to bed early. She lay next to him, neither of them sleeping for a long time, then she wanted him to make love to her … one last time, gently.
He lay on top of her and moved slowly and softly. She buried her face in his neck and made soft little noises. He was distracted by the sight of her bandaged wrists. After a bit he grew desperate and started banging at her hard while she spread her knees and gasped.
‘Is that too hard?’ he asked her.
‘No, it’s all right, don’t stop.’
He banged away until the bed rumbled under them and he silently came. He got off and she rolled over to hold him so gently he felt awful after his roughness. She began to weep silently.
‘I’m back, aren’t I?’ whispered Ben. He stroked her head and let her cry.
34
boy siren
Jackie didn’t notice it at first. Support for her in the school had been rock solid for weeks. Dino was a two-timing piece of toad shit; she was a used innocent. It was obvious. But behind her back the wind had already begun to change.
Of course Dino had behaved badly – but Jackie really had led him right up the garden path, hadn’t she? All those promises. Dumping him on the night of his own party because someone had been sick in the bed! What was that about? He should have chucked her for that! You had to feel sorry for him. And the shoplifting. And his parents splitting up. Now Jackie dumping him on top of everything. It was a bit hard. Look at him! He was so upset.
No one said anything about this to Jackie but she began to notice that her exclamations of his guilt and general nastiness weren’t getting quite the applause she expected.
‘Stay angry,’ Sue hissed in her ear, when she caught sight of Dino smiling hopefully across at Jackie one morning about a month after she’d chucked him. Jackie flashed him a glare that would have withered brickwork and promptly turned her back. Thus it was Sue who saw Dino’s reaction. What she saw in his face wasn’t the usual anger, or contempt, or arrogance, or confusion. Something had happened. He wasn’t disgusting any more. His eyes turned red, his lips pursed. She saw a sore heart. Dino was in pain. Sue felt a pang.
Pity? she thought, amazed at herself. Instinctively she threw herself in between Dino’s face and her friend, as if to protect Jackie from the siren song, the broadcast beams of Dino’s pain.
She hadn’t realised. He was so vulnerable.
So’s Jackie, and I like her, thought Sue to herself as she followed her friend away from the disgraced boy. Dino had been in pain for weeks and he’d just looked pathetic. What was so different? She couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder to where he stood with his face an open door to his distress. It was so touching – he couldn’t hide it! His eyes were wet, he was wiping them with the back of his hand. It was all so unconscious. Staring over her shoulder to check how fast his tears were flowing, Sue collided with Jackie who had stopped to watch her.
‘What are you doing?’ hissed Jackie.
‘Making sure the bastard doesn’t follow us,’ said Sue quickly. Jackie stared suspiciously over her shoulder. Sue ushered her away, but it was already too late.
‘What was that about?’ demanded Jackie when they were clear.
‘Nothing!’
‘He was crying, wasn’t he?’
‘Did you see?’
‘I thought so. Really crying?’
‘Meaningless tears,’ insisted Sue.
‘They made you stop.’
‘I was just surprised, that’s all.’
‘He was crying. For me,’ said Jackie, casting a longing glance away in Dino’s direction.
‘Stop it. Remember! He isn’t worth it.’
But Jackie was immediately and suddenly certain that those tears were wept for her. Every instinct in her body longed to take him in her arms and comfort him and tell him she understood and would make it all better. He was stricken; she had struck him.
The annoying thing about it was, for the past few weeks she’d been enjoying her life for the first time in months. All the things that couples tend to let go of – going out with her friends, dances, just hanging about gassing. She’d taken up fencing again. She’d hardly missed him at all, but now somehow his pain was back in her heart, the siren song was in her ears: I need you, I need you, only you will do. It was irresistible.
She didn’t immediately start wanting him; he just began to populate her brain. During the day she found herself endlessly explaining to him in her mind why they had to split up. At night she dreamed about him talking to her, making love to her, walking or dancing or just being there for her. In one dream she was sitting having tea and cake with friends in one room, while Dino was being dismembered with a razor-sharp kitchen knife in another just down the hall. No one said anything, but they all knew it was going on. She could see people exchanging glances. Dino was in silent agony, dying. Only she could save him. All she had to do was put down her cup and walk through, but she was unable to get up out of her chair.
Sue was exasperated but unsurprised. It all seemed so pointless. It wasn’t even as though Jackie had a broken heart. Sue herself was in more pain several times a year when she dumped one of her string of blokes for no apparent reason, unless it was boredom. It pulled her to pieces every time – it was even worse when one of them dumped her, as they occasionally did. But this obsessive interest in someone who was no good for you – for someone who, as far as she could work out, Jackie didn’t even like, was beyond her. The point was to have fun, wasn’t it? And one day maybe to fall in love. This was neither.
For a few more days she did her best for her friend, but she was rapidly losing interest. Dino had already moved from pariah to someone to be pitied, to someone really rather fanciable in just a few days. OK, maybe he was a tosser but – no one said it yet – so was Jackie.
‘She’s changed,’ pointed out Deborah.
In other words, they deserved one another.
Sue was never very good with boredom. Enough was enough. Dino was obviously something Jackie had to go through. She was clearly beyond the help of medical science, and the kindest thing to do was put her out of her misery. If she had to obsess about Dino, she could do it with him, not her. Sue had had enough.
‘I think you should talk to him,’ she told her one day, suddenly no longer able to bear another word on the subject.
‘Talk to him? Really? Do you really think that?’
‘Definitely.’
‘That’s new. What’s made you change your mind?’
‘Boredom!’ screamed Sue silently. But what she said was, ‘I just think you have unfinished business with him.’
‘Unfinished business?’ Jackie’s face flushed excitedly. She even let out a soft gasp of pleasure. ‘Do you think so?’
‘I really do. You need to talk to him, he needs to talk to you.’ Sue nodded her head firmly. ‘You need to talk to each other.’
‘Really? You know, I think you might be right,’ said Jackie. Her eyes sparkled excitedly. Sue was amazed that she didn’t see any irony in this advice. It was like pressing the on button on a piece of kitchen equipment; off it went.
‘Absolutely,’ she said.
‘Will you have a word with him for me?’
‘Oh no, not me! Get someone else in on it.’
‘OK.’ Jackie nodded; she didn’t seem to mind. ‘Deborah will do it, I expect.’ She smiled. ‘He’ll think I want to go back out with him. He’s in for a surprise if he thinks that, isn’t he?’
‘Isn’t he,’ said Sue.
35
two’s company
Every evening, Ben went to visit. Ali sat in her chair with her head up staring at the wall as if she’d lost her sight. He felt so stitched up. He kept thinking, She’s done this on purpose, but it made no difference. On purpose, by accident, under your heels, over your head, because God wanted it or for no reason at all, whatever. She had him just where she wanted him. Th
ere was no way out. Just thinking about leaving her made him break out in prickles of guilt.
She’d cast a spell and frozen him solid. He wasn’t going anywhere.
About halfway through the week, rumours began to spread through the school. Miss Young was depressed, she’d had an unhappy love affair, she’d tried to kill herself, an overdose, slit wrists. Gossip gossip gossip. Ben tried to see if anyone was watching him. Surely it was only a matter of time before he got caught.
‘I didn’t know,’ he’d say to the head. ‘I didn’t realise, how could I?’
‘It’s a very serious matter. You took advantage of her. You more or less assaulted her, you couldn’t have been closer to Attempted Murder if you wielded the knife yourself. This was a vulnerable young woman, deeply in love with you. You have trifled with her feelings, sir!’
At the flat, Ali clutched his arm and made him sit next to her and kiss her still face. He made her cups of tea, cooked her snacks, read to her, fed her tissues. Every time she wanted him to make love to her. When he left she clung to him and buried her face in his collar bone. There was no more talk of splitting up.
She’d told the school that she was depressed and her friends that it was the break up of a love affair that had sent her over the edge. She had in fact spun a long tale about her boyfriend over the past few months to them, painting a complicated affair with a man from out of town who travelled great distances to see her, a married man who she could never visit but only visited her. It gave her an air of sorry glamour, but everyone was surprised at how badly it affected her; she’d never mentioned love. They all trooped round to visit the heartbroken woman. Ben lived in fear that sooner or later someone was going to catch him.
People would often phone up while he was there, and sometimes there would be a ring at the door. Ali had an intercom to the door of the block; she always answered it but so far she hadn’t let anyone in while he was with her. Who knows how long that would last? She was mad, wasn’t she? Ben begged her not to answer at all, but it caused more problems than it was worth. Was he ashamed of her, she wanted to know? (Yes.) Had he got something to hide? (Yes.) Was he so selfish as to be more worried about himself than her, even though she was in such a mess? (Yes.) And anyway, what harm would it do if someone did find him round there? She seemed to rather like the idea. So he kept his mouth shut and suffered terrors every time the phone or doorbell rang.
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