I Came to Find a Girl

by Jaq Hazell

  “What – he’s here too?”

  I needed to get away, be alone for a moment. I headed to the toilets at the far end of the club. There were about fifteen cubicles in a long line and yet there was always a queue. I waited on the right-hand side, close to the washbasins. All the girls checked themselves in the mirrors at some point. I was next to a particularly smeared patch of glass. I squinted at my reflection, thinking I looked haunted, and then aimed towards a vacated toilet cubicle as its door swung ajar.

  The lock was broken. I sat down, leaning forward, one hand on the door to hold it shut as I relieved myself. The walls were metal and covered in graffiti: ‘Anita Smith takes it up the arse’, ‘The Libertines’, and then another simply said ‘I need love’. Me too, I thought. I want someone, someone of my own, but not Doug, he bores me. Why am I always on the outside of an already established relationship?

  I ran my tongue around my lips. Then, shakily, stood up, leaned my back against the door to hold it shut while I rearranged my dress. I felt dizzy. The floor was wet. My feet gave way. I slid down the door to the floor catching my bare back on the door’s useless metal lock. Shit, that hurt.

  Back outside, I returned to the bar area at the other end of the club.

  “Here, I got you another beer.” Kelly put her arm round me. “I love this song – let’s dance.” So, we all hit the dance-floor for a few tracks, beer cans in hand.

  I went back to the bar, bought another round, danced some more, and then went back to the bar, and bought yet another beer... Bert was still there, watching me. Where’s his fiancée? And there was Luke’s ‘girlfriend’ standing alone, looking at the dance-floor. She talked to some of Luke’s friends before dancing alone for a few miserable minutes, then eventually made her way back to Luke who hardly turned in her direction. He stood back and spoke from a distance barely looking at her. She must have told him she was leaving. She must have asked him to leave with her but he let her go, remaining where he was, looking back at me.

  What is going on? I can’t take this, not tonight. I’ve had enough. I checked my watch; it was getting on for one thirty – late enough. “I’ve got to go,” I said to Tamzin.

  “Yeah, I’ve had enough,” she agreed. “Where’s Kelly?”

  We looked around, spotted her in the corner talking to a guy she really liked.

  Tamzin had a word. “Kelly’s staying, but Spence is coming.”

  I couldn’t walk straight but I managed to follow Tamzin and Spencer out.

  “I’m Hank Marvin.” Spencer nodded towards the pink neon fish flashing in the window of the takeaway across the street. We crossed over and joined other club leftovers in the queue of the brightly lit chip shop.

  “Foxy ladies.” A bloke in a checked shirt handed out flyers for another club night, but we were more interested in smothering our cones of chips with salt, vinegar and ketchup.

  “Shit, look at that rain, it’s pissing it down,” Tamzin said, as she stabbed at a fat, ketchup-coated chip.

  The rain was heavy and none of us had coats or umbrellas. “Let’s shelter down there.” Spencer pointed towards the underpass and Tamzin and Spencer made a run for it, rushing ahead down the fifteen or so concrete steps out of the rain.

  I followed, and as I paused at the top of the steps to stab at another chip, I glanced up and panicked. On the subway’s left-hand side, was Gecko Girl and someone holding a large black umbrella above her bright splash of hair – Flood.

  Fuck. I lost my footing, stumbled and fell down the subway steps, scattering scarlet chips across the concrete.

  Fifteen

  Flood’s DVD continues with an exterior shot of a city street with wet concrete steps that lead down to a fluorescent lit underpass.

  It’s the subway where I fell. The realisation sickens me. I don’t want to know.

  A figure in white with a platinum blonde crop (Gecko Girl) stands over someone lying on the ground. It’s unclear but it must be me.

  “Are you okay?” Gecko Girl asks, as she stoops to check on me. I look up but my face is unrecognisable. It has been pixelated.

  Can you film anyone you like as long as you pixelate them? Is that what he’s done?

  Gecko Girl takes my arm, while Spencer takes hold of my other side. They try to hoist me up but I struggle – obviously out of it. I look pathetic and that makes me now feel even worse.

  “Give us a hand, Jack,” Gecko Girl says.

  “It’s okay, she’s up,” Spencer says.

  Film cuts to a close up of the chips splayed across the path – some fat and anaemic, while others are bright red.

  Gecko Girl folds her arms. “Hurry up, I’m so cold.”

  “Don’t go with him.” It’s my voice, and I sound desperate, crazy even, while my face remains pixelated.

  “Silly drunk tart,” Flood says.

  “There’s no need for that, mate.” Spencer puts his arm round me. “You telling me you never had one too many?”

  Cut to interior, the basic hotel room: tartan bedspread, bed almost filling the room and Flood’s washed-out face in close-up.

  “We’ve met before – the girl in the subway and me, and I have to admit I liked the look of her all over again – rain having made long, dark tendrils of hair stick to her pale face. I wanted to help her, hold her, and film her – but thought better of it.

  “The young idiot she had with her, he was straight in there, arm round her waist. ‘She’s all right,’ he kept saying, ‘she’s just had one too many.’ I told him to take her home before she falls flat on her face again.

  “She was off her head, didn’t know what she was doing, staggering all over the place as the kid with the shaved head tried to hold on to her. She was having none of it, told him to ‘get off’, broke away, up the steps, treading on the red chips as she ran off in the rain – all very sad.”

  Sixteen

  The redness hit me as I entered the room. On a vast white background, a concentrated mass of rich crimson pigment had dripped down the canvas like a Nitsch ‘Action’ painting. I had read about Hermann Nitsch, and how he orchestrates naked pagan-like ceremonies involving the ritualistic slaughter of animals. It looked like a heart had been ripped out and used like a child’s potato print.

  Through a door came a succession of naked women covered in red liquid – blood or paint? Perhaps they would roll on a canvas like an Yves Klein happening or was it something else? Confused, I turned around and there was Flood, naked apart from a towel round his waist, laughing.

  I sat bolt upright. It’s not real. He’s not here. I’m all right.

  I had expected shades of asylum: pale pea green on the lower part of the walls with dishwater grey above, but then I figured police stations should be drab, somewhere you wouldn’t rush back to. To think I had been walking past that ugly pile for a good two years and had never taken much notice.

  Kelly must have sensed my apprehension as she linked arms and pulled me forward through the heavy stone doorway to a wooden counter.

  “We’ve something to report,” she said.

  The duty officer had a face like a pit bull. I couldn’t tell him anything.

  “Is there a female officer we can see?”

  Pit-bull leant towards the window. “We have the Sanctuary,” he stated, passing a leaflet through the hatch. “Is that what you need?”

  Kelly nodded.

  “Take a seat; someone will be with you shortly.”

  The leaflet described a rape suite for sexual assaults. “‘Rape Suite’ – it sounds like they’re renting out luxury space to rapists,” I said. “This isn’t going to work. I’ll be wasting police time – they charge people for that.”

  “Sit.” Kelly pointed at some grey chairs, and I sat, staring up at the array of posters fixed to the wall behind protective plastic: ‘Drugs are no way to live!’ – with a photo of a dead body on a mortuary slab; ‘All of her friends said she was the life of the party. But she can’t remember.’ And then there were posters
about terrorism and how we must be vigilant, and knife crime – saying you’re more likely to be a victim if you carry a knife.

  “Is that all they can do – commission posters?” I said. “I can’t do this.”

  Kelly stopped texting and looked at me. “You’re here now,” she said, “so you may as well talk to someone. You might prevent it happening to someone else.”

  Between us we knew of four other friends who’d been victims of sexual assaults and that didn’t include me. One of Kelly’s friends from home was fifteen when it happened to her. It was her brother’s mate. Another friend got attacked on a date and he made out she led him on, and then I had a friend whose boyfriend had hammered her against a wall in the death-throes of their relationship and another who’d had a date go seriously wrong. So, if every woman knows at least two friends who have been raped that would suggest possibly epidemic proportions – judging by the fact none of our friends had reported the attacks, it could well be a silent epidemic. And, so far, I’d been part of that.

  “Just get it logged,” Kelly said. “Even if there isn’t enough evidence at least they’ll have it on record in case someone else one day reports him. It could even help your mate Jenny in some way, you never know.”

  Oh my God, she’s made the same possible link I made. I felt sick and I wanted to go, get out, and run all the way up the hill home to my room and lock the door.

  “Mia Jackson?” A chunky blonde woman with a nasal voice looked at us. “Would you like to come through?”

  We were led down several corridors to a door labelled ‘The Sanctuary’. The room, painted in a warm shade of sand with primrose yellow cushioned chairs and a vase of plastic lilies, was as comfortable as a police station gets.

  “I’m DC Jan Wilson. Call me Jan. I’ll be your point of contact – anything you need to ask or any problems you have, just give me a call. She punctuated her words with a kindly smile. “OK, first things first, when did the offence take place?”

  The date was indelibly etched on my mind – a future unhappy anniversary. “It was Friday 27th May. I always work on Fridays.”

  She consulted her desk calendar. “That’s three weeks ago – to be honest, the quicker these things are reported the better. The evidence will be limited.”

  I knew that. There was little Jan could tell me. I’d looked it all up on rape crisis websites. I knew I should have gone straight to the police after fleeing the hotel. I shouldn’t have washed and I should have given blood and urine, saliva and pubic hair samples. Swabs should have been taken from my mouth, vagina and rectum. I should have been examined and probably photographed within forty-eight hours. And even then the likelihood of gaining a conviction would still have been below ten per cent, and more like five.

  “You understand it’s too late to examine you physically. We need to think about other possible evidence. Do you still have the clothes you were wearing that night?”

  That morning I’d retrieved the carefully wound plastic package I’d hidden at the back of my wardrobe. I held it up for Jan to see. “They’re cut up, I’m afraid – I couldn’t help it.”

  Jan took the bag without looking inside. “The lab will do their best,” she said. “How do you feel about making a statement?”

  The night before came crashing back on me: Flood in the mirrors at Ruby’s, Flood by the subway, my scattered scarlet chips and how I ran home in a panic as if Flood were chasing me, when in reality it was Tamzin and Spencer who were shouting at me to ‘wait up’.

  Jan-the-policewoman looked at me expectantly, and again a wave of nausea came over me. “Where’s the nearest toilet? I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Seventeen

  Interior, Flood’s studio: the artist sits in his calico-covered chair, smoking. “I’ve had a little visit,” he announces to camera. “Police hammered on my door in the early hours. I thought it was my dealer until someone shouted, ‘Police, open up.’ You can’t wake the awake. ‘Do you know **beep** **beep**?’ they asked, and they wanted to know where I was on the night of Friday 27th May 2005. ‘Do you like to drug women, Mr Flood? Do you like to have sex when they are semi-conscious or even half-comatose? Does rape inspire your art?’

  “They were female – fat and middle-aged, Cagney and Lacey gone to seed. They did a lot of staring, but who the hell is **beep** **beep** anyway? I racked my brain and then it came to me – the waitress.” He drags on his cigarette. “I have total recall – does she?

  “It was her idea to go for a drink. I wasn’t bothered. It was late and the bar was about to close – she suggested we take a bottle to the room. ‘Why don’t you freshen up a little,’ she said – does she remember that? Because I know the barman will. He was delivering the champagne as she said it. It is always worth making friends with the barman – those guys remember everything.” Flood shifts in his seat. “Everything we did was consensual, although it was nothing special and so, no, I didn’t call. Perhaps she felt bad about that – she let herself down. And now she’s made a complaint, all these weeks later. Silly girl – she won’t feel any better about herself.”

  Eighteen

  The last day of term should have been a mere formality: turn up, sign in, have coffee, then disappear until September. Only I’d been called in for an extra crit, as had Kelly, Spencer, Charlotte and Judy.

  We hung our work on the walls or laid it on the floor. Spencer had a large stormy canvas, while Charlotte was using dolls (something to do with an alleged abortion). Judy had garish close-ups of rotting exotic fruit and I had the series of self-portraits I’d continued after the last project. There was an obvious progression; they were becoming more abstract, hazy almost, or at least I thought so. Spencer said it looked like I was disappearing, which made me think of Jenny, and brought a lump to my throat. “Don’t say that,” I said, as I stared vacantly at the vast seascape he’d leant against the wall.

  “How long are they going to keep us waiting?” Kelly sat on one of the desks. Quarter of an hour late, the office door swung open and a pair of cowboy boots clicked onto the steps as first Mike Manners, then Mike Cherry appeared.

  “Right, let’s get started,” Mike Cherry’s bright blue eyes over-blinked as if something were irritating him. “Whose is this?” He looked around, his lips pursed.

  “It’s mine,” I said, only daring to raise my hand a little.

  “Mia, long time no see.” Mike Manners stroked his greying stubble.

  Mike Cherry glared. “You’ve been avoiding us?”

  “No, not at all.” I was taken aback.

  “We’ve barely seen you. Missing in action?” Mike Manners said. “Is there anything we should know?”

  How could I tell them that my life had divided into Before Flood and After Flood, and that while his show was still on at my college I was finding it hard to walk through the door?

  “Cat got your tongue?” Mike Cherry asked.

  “I find it easier to work at home, that’s all.”

  “Well, that’s no good to us,” Mike Cherry said.

  “I’ve been working. It’s just I like to be alone.”

  “We need you here in person, otherwise we can’t help and by the looks of it, you need all the help you can get,” Mike Cherry said.

  They fell silent as everyone contemplated my latest triptych of self-portraits.

  “This is carrying on from the last project, I take it?” Mike Manners said.

  “Yes, I wanted to take it further.”

  “Do you think you managed that?”

  I shuffled from foot to foot. “I dunno, maybe.”

  “We’re not saying they’re not interesting,” Mike Manners said.

  Mike Cherry interrupted, “But it’s not enough. They’re shoddy. I’d be ashamed to show them.”

  Kelly gave me a sympathetic look, while I bit the inside of my cheek. Keep it together.

  “There’s nothing wrong with carrying on a project if you think you can really take it somewhere,” Mike Manners said,
“but I’d like you to think long and hard about where you’re going with this. Your third and final year starts in September – that’s only a few months away; you need to knuckle down. There’s no second chance. You have to make it happen. You have to make it matter.”

  “And if you’re not here, we can’t help,” Mike Cherry said. “Can we have a girl guide’s promise that we’ll see you in the studio on a daily basis next term?”

  I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek. It was so unfair. I had been working hard only I’d done it alone in my room back at my house.

  “We heard about your friend,” Mike Manners said. “Has there been any news?”

  I blinked hard, determined not to cry. “No, nothing.”

  “You can talk to us, you know,” Mike Manners said, “we’re always here – even if you’re not.”

  They moved on to Kelly, and then Spencer, Charlotte and Judy. Everyone got the same treatment. Afterwards, we all gathered up our unworthy artwork and made our way out of the studio, my stomach knotted in dread as we went down the corridor towards the foyer. Flood’s bloody show – I tried not to look but I couldn’t help it. What is going on? There were three burly men in black T-shirts, arms folded, contemplating a particularly large piece. They were considering how best to move it. It’s being dismantled. It’s over. It was about to be packed away and shipped off somewhere, anywhere, who cares – it would be the dump if I had my way.

  At last I could reclaim the space as my own. And surely now it would be less likely Flood would return to Nottingham. Next term will be easier. I won’t fail.

  “Anyone fancy a coffee?” I said; for once keen to hang around.

  Nineteen

  My housemates left for the summer, while I stayed on to work at Saviour’s as there were few seasonal jobs in Stowe-on-Sea.

  My parents came to visit. We met in the foyer of the Victoria Hotel, and Mum soon asked about “that poor girl that’s gone missing”.