The Life She Wants

by J. M. Hewitt

  I collected up the belt, the spoon and the needle and carried them all through to the kitchen, placing them beside her packet of cigarettes. Then I returned to the living room, where I draped a blanket over her inert form and got to tidying up the rest of the room.

  All the while, she slept on.

  * * *

  It was an awful existence, no way for a teenage girl to live. But up until then it had been bearable. I kept the house clean, along with myself, and washed our clothes and ironed them and changed my mother’s bed sheets. I didn’t mind doing any of that.

  My mother didn’t trouble me, didn’t bug me to do homework or lecture me about the dangers a young girl might face. She never kept track of my movements, and because of all this, I never rebelled like so many of my classmates. A threat had never been there until now.

  Until Carl.

  He gave my mother heroin. That was the brown stuff and why she needed the needle and the spoon and the belt, and from the snippets of conversation I heard between them, it was really, really expensive. Carl took ‘payment in kind’, and because he could name his price, sometimes he took more than the use of her body. Money that we kept in a jar for electricity vanished, as did pieces of my mother’s jewellery. She had never done heroin until he came into her life. He had introduced her to it, and I knew it was dangerous. And I soon learned that she couldn’t live without it.

  ‘Don’t let him in,’ I pleaded with her after he’d taken all the cash in the house.

  She stared at me. ‘Where else am I going to get it from?’ she asked. ‘This is the best deal, he doesn’t always take money.’

  It was unspoken, but that was what I was afraid of. I knew Carl would accept the use of me as payment for Mum’s habit, and I couldn’t – wouldn’t – live like that.

  ‘Do you have any cash hidden anywhere?’ I asked her.

  She shrugged, unable to remember, unable to care.

  Later, when she slept, I turned the whole house upside down and came up with forty quid. When she woke, I held it up to her.

  ‘If he comes, don’t let him in.’ I moved the four ten-pound notes in front of her face. She followed them with her eyes. ‘I’ll get your stuff, just don’t let him in.’

  She needed it, I knew that much. At lunchtime I’d gone to the library and read up on addiction. There was no point trying to make her stop; the brown stuff was too big for both of us.

  I considered asking Kevin, our weed-smoking neighbour, if he knew where I could get some from. But by then I knew that heroin and marijuana were very different drugs, used by two very different types of people. Although I’d learned that the weed Kevin smoked was something called a ‘gateway drug’, and one day he might move on to my mother’s drug of choice too. So that night, when it was nearing midnight, I went out on the streets and headed to the rougher part of town, the Billingham Road. I wondered if I looked out of place in my winter tweed coat, my hair hidden under a black woollen hat and my mother’s scarf concealing the bottom of my face. To my relief, as I moved among the emaciated, toothless users, nobody gave me a second glance. Horror crept in as I realised that I must have looked like I belonged there.

  I moved past the teenage youths, knowing they would be dealing weed or pills, and edged my way into a cluster of men. ‘Got any brown?’ I asked.

  Three men melted away into the night, leaving one who looked me up and down. ‘For you?’ he asked.

  I tried to detect a hint of surprise in his question, but realised he was just being careful, making sure I wasn’t a decoy.

  ‘For me,’ I confirmed.

  ‘What you got?’ he asked.

  I took thirty pounds from my pocket. He looked bored, and I pulled the last tenner out. He snatched it, rubbed the notes between his fingers; then, to my astonishment, he handed me four packages wrapped in tin foil. Then, as suddenly as the other men who had been with him, he was gone.

  I put the foil envelopes in my pocket. I couldn’t believe I had got four. Heroin, it seemed, wasn’t a very expensive habit after all, in spite of what Carl had told my mother.

  I left Billingham Road and all the horrors it held, winding my way home. Across the road was a little cluster of people, dolled up, fancy. I pulled my hood up and watched them. A couple, an older man and woman, walked either side of a young girl. I looked at the girl with envy. She wore a pretty dress with a full skirt, and a hip-length white fur coat. Her hair was long and luscious, her face carefully made up. Her heels clicked on the pavement and I drew in a sharp breath.

  It was Rebecca Lavery. The girl from my school who had been removed from her home and sent to a loving family. Were these her foster parents?

  I chewed on my nails as I watched them, vaguely wondering why they were out so late. Wherever they had been must have been somewhere nice. I leaned against the wall, imagining a dinner with three courses, white tablecloths and crystal wine glasses.

  They stopped to cross the road and Rebecca turned in my direction. Her glance swept over me with no hint or sign of recognition, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away from her. She was beautiful, yet that lovely clear-skinned face, those eyes, they still held the same look that she’d worn at school.

  Sad, worried, filled with pain.

  I raised a hand in greeting, a tentative half-wave. Rebecca blinked. Her lips parted. Just as quickly, she turned and was gone.

  I pulled my coat tighter around me and started home. Maybe she just looked like that because it took time to get over what she’d been through. I told myself that I was happy for her, but my clenched jaw and fingers that curled into fists revealed the lie.

  * * *

  At home, my mother was in her usual place, on the sofa, wrapped in her dressing gown with a blanket over her knees. She was shivering violently.

  ‘You took my money,’ she hissed when I came into the room. ‘Carl came round and I couldn’t get my stuff off him because you took my money.’

  I took a seat opposite her. ‘I told you not to let him in, don’t you remember?’ She stared at me blankly, her teeth chattering, her tongue slipping in and out of her mouth. ‘I said I was going to get it for you, so you don’t need to let Carl in any more.’

  As I spoke, I drew out one of the foil envelopes and she lunged for it. I went to pull it away – I wanted to talk to her first, to ask her if she could try and get better – but I was too slow and she snatched it out of my grasp.

  Into the kitchen she moved at speed, rifling in the drawers, getting her spoon, the needle, digging in the pocket of her gown for my belt.

  ‘Mum, I need to talk to you,’ I pleaded. ‘I really want to try and help you to get better. I don’t want to have to live with you like this.’

  Impatiently she brushed me aside and headed back to the living room. ‘I know, I’ll stop soon,’ she said as she set about heating the spoon with her lighter.

  I watched the spoon as it turned brown and acrid. She didn’t even keep her paraphernalia separate. I would eat from that spoon, once I’d washed it up. A slow burn began inside of me, and I felt something close to hatred as the liquid began to bubble.

  I left the room before she put the needle in her arm.

  * * *

  I withheld the remaining three packets of brown. With a butter knife I removed the lock from the toilet door and fitted it to the outside of my mother’s bedroom door.

  Later, I helped her up the stairs and put her to bed. As carefully as I could, I removed my belt from around her arm, rubbing her withered skin to get the blood flowing. Irritated, she pulled away from me, and burrowed under the bedclothes like a child.

  I placed three large bottles of water and a bucket on the floor by her bed. On the windowsill I put two pots of yoghurt, a banana that was already on the turn and a packet of biscuits. I stared at the snacks, knowing she wouldn’t eat them, but it felt like a nurturing thing to do. It was the kind of thing a mother would do if she had a sick child.

  My mother snored and whistled, and I backed out of th
e room and quietly closed the door. I took a deep breath and slid the lock into place. Then I sat down with my back to the door and waited.

  Chapter 14

  Paula upended all her bags, checked the pockets of her jeans, her coat, the carrier bags by the bed that contained the few souvenirs she had purchased. She opened the wardrobe, rifled through the clothes in there, even checking the pockets of Tommy’s body warmer and dinner jacket.

  With her hands on her hips she stood in the centre of the suite and turned in a full circle. Had she even had her phone when she went out today? She thought back, tried to remember the last time she had used it. She hadn’t pulled it out to take any photos when she was in Åndalsnes today. She hadn’t been in the mood.

  Abandoning her search, she went to the sliding doors and slipped outside. The howling wind pummelled her face and she gasped and hurried back in, pulling the doors closed behind her. The ship’s horn blasted, signalling that they were about to leave port. Through the glass she stared across the narrow strip of water to the area lined with benches where she had sat earlier, and as the ship rocked gently, she groaned at the thought that her phone might be left behind on land.

  Turning her back on the dockside, she ran across the room to the door and pulled at the handle again, holding her breath. When it didn’t move, she exhaled, tears spiking at her eyes. The captain’s cautionary tale over the loudspeaker came back to her: the maelstrom, the deadly whirlpool that sucked ships and passengers to their death. They were sailing near it; what if there was an accident? What if they were pulled into it? She would be left here, in the cabin, unable to get out and make it to the lifeboats.

  Her breath came quicker. Beaten, she rubbed at her face. Her eyelids were heavy, as though she’d been awake for days, and she moved over to a chair and sank into it. She noticed she hadn’t closed the sliding doors fully, and the curtain flapped in the breeze, the chill coming into the room making her shiver.

  Should close the door, she thought, but suddenly it was too much effort to lean forward and slide it completely shut. With the wind howling outside, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Confusion overcame her, just moments before sleep.

  * * *

  For dinner, Anna dressed in a simple black jumpsuit, a thin gold chain around her neck and her make-up natural. She grabbed her black clutch, put on her tallest stilettos and let herself quietly out of the suite.

  The corridor was empty and silent, and the ship’s engine hummed a gentle tune beneath her feet. She smiled; they were on the move, and tonight, after the meal, they would be far enough out in the open ocean that she could dispose of Mark. But first, she had other plans to attend to.

  Outside Tommy and Paula’s suite she stopped and pulled Mark’s master key from her purse. He had been more than happy to tell her all about the workings of the ship, and the most surprising one had been the keys. In the event of an emergency – striking another boat, or terrorism, or something else that threatened life – the passengers were to return to their suites or cabins. At the captain’s discretion, all the doors would be locked from the outside. Controversial, Mark had said, but sometimes necessary. Also, not something that the shipping line advertised.

  And it had worked, Anna saw now. Just one turn of the key when she had left the Expedition Suite earlier and the red light was still glowing on the door handle button. She inserted the master key now, and with the softest of clicks the door opened. With a palm flat on the door, she pushed it open far enough to slip inside. The room was in darkness now, but the outside balcony lamp cast a strip of light that cut through the centre of the room. In the chair nearest the door sat Paula, her head back, her breathing deep, heavy and even.

  Anna smiled to herself and backed out into the hallway, pulling the door to but not closing it fully.

  * * *

  The restaurant was heaving, the passengers seemingly revived and in high spirits from their day on land. Anna made her way to the far side, near the floor-to-ceiling windows and Tommy’s usual table.

  He saw her approach and stood up, waving to her with a yell. ‘Anna!’ he called. ‘Over here.’

  He really was rather animalistic, she noted with distaste as she smiled her hellos to the table and sat down in the empty seat next to him. It was clearly being saved for Paula, and she waited with interest to see if he would mention his wife.

  ‘Did you have a good day?’ he asked, and without waiting for a reply he went on, ‘Found a cute little sports bar, didn’t I?’

  She watched him eat, realising he was already on his main course. She frowned, and asked, ‘Where’s Paula?’

  He glanced up, something flickering across his face. ‘Didn’t she come down with you?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I was late getting ready, so I assumed she would already be here.’

  He stood up, and Anna was surprised that he would be so chivalrous as to go and look for her. Instead, he picked up his empty plate. ‘Back in a sec,’ he said, and wove his way through the tables towards the buffet.

  After a moment, she got up and followed him. She gave in to her body’s demands and selected a small lamb chop with a rocket side salad. She had heavy physical work to do later on tonight and the last thing she needed was to become light-headed and topple through the railings, following Mark to his watery grave.

  She picked at the meat, trying not to let her disgust show as a white strip of fat glistened on the bone. She pushed it to one side, eating only the darker, well-cooked meat. She forced the rocket salad into her mouth and washed it down with copious amounts of water. After a few minutes she was entirely full.

  One by one the other occupants of the table fell away, until it was just Tommy and Anna. Without a word being spoken, they moved to the plush couch by the glass wall and looked out at the black night. It was impossible to tell where the sky ended and the sea began. Grey-black clouds drifted across the moon.

  ‘No Northern Lights tonight,’ said Tommy gloomily as he put his beer bottle down on the table.

  Anna stared at it, then glanced at the five other empty bottles on their dinner table. He would have had several in the sports bar too. She sipped at her own lime and soda before abandoning it – the carbonated water only served to make her feel uncomfortably bloated.

  ‘I might turn in,’ she said with a smile. ‘Shall we walk back together?’ She leaned forward, her normal trick of allowing him a good view down her low-cut top, though only for a second, as she reached for her clutch bag.

  He nodded dumbly, and together they made their way through the almost empty restaurant.

  In silence the elevator sped upwards, and Anna angled herself so that she was almost touching Tommy’s side. As the lift came to a stop, he jerked as if stung, and looked down at her. Anna smiled at him and together they exited.

  ‘Thank you for being my dinner date,’ she said huskily as they walked along the hallway.

  He stopped outside his own suite, and she saw the frown on his face as he clocked that the door was slightly ajar.

  ‘See ya,’ she said, pretending not to notice, and threw him a small wave over her shoulder. She made no mention of Paula, and as she slipped inside her room, she was aware of him still watching her until she closed the door silently behind her.

  * * *

  In her medicated sleep, Paula dreamed of the Northern Lights. She lifted her head and watched the green glow as it filled the sky, then wrapped her arms around herself, feeling troubled. She had thought the lights would be beautiful. Instead, they were sinister, shrouding her, wrapping her up too tight. So tight that she couldn’t breathe. Beneath her feet, the ground swirled and rippled. It was the maelstrom that she had heard about. It pulled her into its magnetic grip until she was spinning and spinning, down, down, down. All the while Tommy stood nearby, impervious to her distress, his eyes on the sky, his face filled with wonder.

  There was a loud noise, a repetitive clanging and banging, and a pressure on her shoulders. Through the fog
of sleep, Paula pushed against it, forcing her eyes open. Her eyeballs stung and she winced at the harsh white light. The green was gone, and she was back in her chair in the Expedition Suite. Everything crashed back at her: she was locked in the suite, and her phone was missing, and Tommy… she didn’t even know if he had made it back onto the ship. And now somebody was in her room, standing over her, looming and pushing at her.

  She yelped, thrashed at the heavy shape with her arms, swinging and hitting, remembering being on the deck, the mass there that had shoved at her and tried to kill her.

  She screamed. A hand, rough and big, clamped down on her mouth and a voice hissed in her ear.

  ‘Jesus, Paula, it’s me!’

  She wriggled away. ‘Tommy?’

  He moved away to sit in the chair opposite her. ‘You were dead to the world.’

  She shuddered at his words and struggled to sit up. ‘Did you see the Northern Lights?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Nah, too much cloud tonight. Couldn’t even see the moon. What happened to you at dinner?’

  It had been a dream, she realised, those horrible, terrible green lights, the maelstrom. And… dinner?

  She pushed herself up and out of the chair, staggered as her body kept moving even when she stopped walking. Tommy put a hand out towards her.

  ‘Whoa,’ he said, ‘steady.’

  She looked to the door, tightly closed, and strode over to it. Pulling the handle, she yanked it open and stared in disbelief.

  ‘How did you get in here?’ she asked.

  ‘The door was open – you shouldn’t leave it open if you’re sleeping. You were out cold, anyone could have walked in here and taken anything.’ As if to prove his point, he got up and walked to his nightstand, checking the pile of money that he kept in the drawer.