by Lucy Lawrie
Steve’s fingers were within millimetres of my shoulder now, his other hand spread flat on the cushion near my knee.
‘But it’s you, Janey. It’s like . . .’ he shrugged. ‘It’s like how squirrels bury nuts or whatever.’
Squirrels?
‘Or, you know, woodpeckers. Pecking wood.’
‘Woodpeckers?’
He sighed, exasperated. ‘It’s what you do.’
I wanted to take his stray hand. I wanted to put it on my knee, or further up my leg. I wanted to pull him on top of me, feel the weight of him on me.
Suddenly he drew in a deep breath and stood up.
‘Shall we go for a walk? Or maybe a drive? If I stay here any longer I’m going to . . .’
‘Going to what?’
He sighed. ‘We’re just going to be friends, remember?’
‘Oh, okay.’
*
1990s London receded in the shock of cold Edinburgh air outside. Steve drove northwards out of town, turning off the dual carriageway at the exit to South Queensferry, weaving deftly along unlit country roads. Finally, on a stretch of open land, he pulled the car up in a lay-by. There would have been a beautiful view in the daytime, fields sloping gently down to the coast. Now, the Firth of Forth cut a black swathe through the dark landscape, with the lights of Fife scattered beyond.
‘So,’ he said, pulling up the handbrake and switching off the engine. ‘What’s this dream about?’
His voice deepened at the end of the question, as though enough was enough.
‘The audition dream? Oh, that was—’
‘The one now. The dream you’re getting now.’
‘I can’t. I—’
He sighed: the tiniest sigh, barely audible. It could have been impatience, or just an acknowledgement of the difficulty of it all. ‘You have to get this out. This sleeping thing can’t go on. Give me one word.’
‘Oh God . . . I, uh . . . hammer.’
I dropped my face to my hands. What was I doing?
‘It’s okay.’ There was a pause. ‘It really is okay. I’m here. I’m listening to you.’
He spoke gently, but it felt like he was peeling my skin off, one strip at a time.
‘In the dream, there’s a hammer.’
Saying the word was easier the second time. I could feel myself sliding towards the edge. The unburdening. How would it feel to have told someone this? It couldn’t feel worse.
‘And there’s Pip.’
There was a slight – ever so slight – change in the atmosphere in the car. His expression remained neutral, but I sensed an edginess in his stillness now, the pads of his fingers pulsing against the denim of his jeans. Out of nowhere, Daphnia flashed into my mind, revealed in the pale orb of the microscope field, its antennae still and its dark heart flickering. I felt again the shock of that secret life revealed. I could almost feel the heat radiating up to my cheek, and smell the faint scorching of the light.
What was this?
Did I trust him?
I love him.
My heart had decided. I was falling.
‘It’s dark, and he’s curled on his side in a hollow in the earth, and he’s cold because he’s only wearing his pyjamas, and he’s cold because he’s dead. And beside him, next to his body, his soft little body, there’s a hammer.’
Steve exhaled softly.
‘And there are mounds of earth on the side, and I’m piling them into the hollow, sweeping them in with my arms. His arm, and his little neck, are the first bits to be covered. And then I’m dropping soil over his eyes, and his nose, and his mouth and he’s about to go under. He’s about to disappear. And then it’s like a massive, million-volt shock because I realise what I’ve done, and I’m scrabbling in the earth. Just scrabbling, trying to uncover him, but there’s nothing there. Nothing there but earth. That’s when I wake up. Oh Christ. Oh Christ.’
‘Stop it, Janey. Stop it. You’re hurting yourself.’
He held my hands, where they were clawing into my upper arms, and made them go still.
‘It’s okay,’ he said in a low voice.
I slowed my breathing. He let go of my hands and just sat, staring ahead through the darkness towards the twinkling lights.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
‘It is only a dream, Janey.’
‘But a dream where I’ve k-killed Pip! Why is it happening? Why?’
‘Shh-hh. Stop panicking.’ He let a pause fall. ‘You must have thought about it yourself. What’s your own take on it? Is it related to a memory, or anything like that?’
‘I’ve never killed anyone, no, funnily enough. It’s not a hobby of mine if that’s what you’re worried about.’
His hands flew up in a defensive gesture. ‘All right. It’s just, well, dreams aren’t straightforward. The hammer, the earth, even Pip, could represent other, totally different things. With recurring dreams like this, your brain’s probably trying to process something.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Often,’ he added, ‘it’s some kind of trauma.’
‘I was supposed to feel better,’ I said, in a very small voice. ‘I was supposed to feel better when I’d told somebody.’
He whipped round to face me.
‘Don’t do this,’ he said. ‘Don’t put it onto me like this. I can’t fix it. I can’t fix it the way you want me to.’ His voice was shaking.
Cold. Cold washed over me and through me.
‘You’re right,’ I said finally. ‘Actually, I was right, there wasn’t any point in talking about it in the first place. Nobody can do anything. Could you just take me home, please. I’m tired.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. ‘This is just all screwed up. I want to help you, and I want to listen, but my head’s in a spin. I care about you too much. I want to . . . Jesus, I just want to . . .’ He growled and brought both hands down hard on the steering wheel.
I wanted him to kiss me. To look me in the eyes and make love to me. Now that he’d stripped me down to this with his questions, I wanted him to spill back into me and fill those spaces, those ugly gaps, with himself, so that it wouldn’t matter any more.
‘But what – now you know about—’
‘I don’t care about any of that, Janey. That’s not you. That has nothing to do with sweet, beautiful you. It’s some fucking awful dream that’s making you miserable. Most likely because of some fucking awful thing that’s happened to you. I want to make it go away for you. But I don’t know how. And all I’m left with is that I just want . . . you.’
I looked him straight in the eye and saw a fragile new version of myself reflected back to me. The dream seemed to shear away and dissolve, something that wasn’t part of me after all. And then, with each breath, then I could feel myself returning, like colour seeping into what had been black and white. Into my arms, my legs, my chest, my fingers.
‘I’m scared, Janey. I’m scared, all right? I want you so much and I don’t think I can stay here any more.’
‘Stay where?’
‘On the outside. The outside of you. You’re pulling me. You’re pulling me in.’
‘Well’ – it emerged as little more than a whisper – ‘come in, then.’
‘I can’t do what you want me to do. You seem to think I can, I don’t know, fix everything, or love you until it won’t matter any more. But you’re going realise that I’m just . . . I’m just . . .’
I managed the three words I needed.
‘Let’s go home.’
*
He drove with his face set into a frown, his breathing deep and strong.
He almost looked angry. Could he have misunderstood? I searched for words, to backtrack, to ease the pressure down a notch.
‘Steve?’
But then, without taking his eyes off the road, he reached across and put his hand on my leg, his fingers squeezing the soft inner part.
By the time we turned into my street I was shaking, nerve ends charged to hur
ting point. Inside, he pushed me up against the wall to kiss me. He reached under my shirt for my waist, the bare skin of my ribcage, sending a million stars – soft, silent, white-hot stars – shooting down my body.
‘How is it, how is it that you’re never just one thing? One minute you’re closed, all hard edges. Beautiful hard edges that push against me . . . here, and here . . .’ He ran his hands down my sides, stopping to hold my elbows, my wrists, to trace my hip bones under the denim stretch of my jeans.
‘And here.’ He took my chin in his hand, tilting it upwards. ‘And then I hold you in a different way and you’re all softness, and curves, and . . . oh God . . .’ He slid his hand under the waistband of my jeans, cupping the curve of my hip. Pulled me closer to him.
‘Shall we slow down? Do you want to slow down?’ he said into my neck.
‘No. Definitely not.’ I detached him and led him into my bedroom.
He sat down next to me on the edge of my bed as I pulled my jeans off, a friend again for a moment. ‘Are you sure, Jay? Sure you want this?’
I nodded and opened my bedside drawer. ‘Look, I’ve even bought some up-to-date condoms.’
‘So you didn’t entirely buy into the “let’s behave ourselves” policy then?’
‘Never.’
And then he was next to me, over me, but still too far, a million miles too far. I took hold of his hand, showed him where I wanted it. He groaned, and I felt his fingers slide into me. The fingers I’d watched that first day in the art class and wanted to touch. His body was finding its way home to me after all this time.
He drew in a long, slow breath with a catch in it, and opened his mouth to say something. But I seemed to be taking off his clothes, snatching at his belt and fumbling with his zip, releasing his hardness, pulling him onto me.
And when we came to the moment – the last moment before we changed from friends to lovers – he paused to look at me, as though to register it. Then without breaking eye contact, he moved and pushed into me. And moved and pushed, slowly, again, until I’d taken the whole of him inside me.
‘Are you okay?’ he said, stroking a lock of hair away from my cheek. ‘You should probably breathe.’
‘I feel like . . .’
‘What?’
‘I’m falling.’
‘Let yourself fall. I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.’
Something ignited in me, in my heart and my mind, and the world caught fire. I sank back on the bed, lost, utterly lost in the feel of him, and the deep pools of those eyes, taking me and giving me back. Taking and giving me back.
34
Janey
The next day, I couldn’t stop singing. I knew I probably sounded like a demented Disney princess who’d found her prince, but all the same, it was as if something inside me couldn’t help but soar free. I sang while I was putting on the kettle, while I was making toast and eggs for Steve. He was looking slightly crumpled, in yesterday’s clothes and with a day’s growth of stubble, and I couldn’t stop touching him. I stroked his arm as I put his plate in front of him, with two golden slices of toast and two beautiful, pinky-brown eggs. Had anything ever been so perfect? I laid my hands on his shoulders and back, just to learn the shape of him, to feel how his muscles would move as he spread the butter on his toast or stirred his tea. I laid my cheek against the warmth of his hair, like I did with Pip.
It was like my nerves had grown towards the surface since yesterday, and were just under my skin where before they’d been buried deep inside. I imagined them unfurling, branching into a thousand little tendrils in that dark red space.
‘So,’ he said, as he finished his breakfast and sat back in his chair.
‘So.’
‘Back to bed?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow and a twist of a smile.
I sighed luxuriously, stretching out my bare feet under the table, feeling the cool of the tiles under my toes. ‘Sadly not. Pip’s coming back soon.’ And Murray, blasting through the flat as if it was his own.
He gave me a smouldering look. ‘Not sure I can wait until next time, though. God, Janey.’ He sat up straight, suddenly, and reached a hand across the table. ‘I want to be in you. Now.’
My insides clenched. I went to him where he sat, and pulled his head to my chest. His hands ran down over my back, fingers spreading as they found the tops of my legs, pulling me in towards him.
‘Do you . . .’ I pulled back and looked at him. ‘Were you surprised by what happened?’
‘I’ve been wanting to take you to bed since the first day I saw you.’ He inched my pyjama bottoms down a fraction, bending to plant a kiss on the strip of warm skin he’d exposed. ‘Wanting to touch you, your body, your skin, your hair. Not just to imagine what you’d feel like, under my hands, but to know.’ His voice deepened. ‘To know you from the inside.’
I exhaled sharply as he tugged me towards him again.
‘But I had no idea I’d feel like this afterwards.’
‘How do you feel?’
Do you love me? Do you feel like I feel? Can this really be happening?
He clasped his hands behind his head and stretched his arms. ‘I feel bloody amazing.’
I sat myself down on his knee.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ I said. ‘I want to know you inside out too. What about parents, school, where you grew up? Your dreams? All of that stuff.’
‘If we’ve got time for all of that, we’ve got time to go back to bed . . .’
I looked ceilingward, pretending to evaluate. ‘If you tell me five things we can go back to bed for five minutes.’
‘Parents. Both dead now. Mum was a nurse. Dad worked for a frozen-food company. From Sheffield originally. That’s where I was born. We moved to Edinburgh when I was eight because of Dad’s job.’ He shot at look at me. ‘I was on a full bursary at St Simon’s, if you were wondering. A Bursary Bum, as the other boys frequently reminded me.’
‘Oh! That’s—’
‘No brothers or sisters. I was shy as a child, then one of those angsty creative teenagers, did my degree in art and art history, and that led me to teaching at the college. Dreams? To start painting properly again, have my own workshop and gallery, somewhere on the tourist trail, so commercially viable but still beautiful. Loch Fyne or somewhere.’
‘And a tea room?’
I could run your tea room and bake cakes and scones and chocolate tiffin, and Pip could get a little fishing net and paddle by the loch side on sunny days.
‘Yeah?’
‘Scones are always good for a tea room. I’ve got a recipe I could give you.’
Jesus Christ. Scones are always good for a tea room?
His lips twitched. ‘Er, thank you. Anyway, that’s at least ten things. Does that mean I can have you for ten minutes?’
*
And later that evening, once Pip had been delivered back from Murray’s, with a new art easel from the Early Learning Centre and an adult-sized badminton set (why?), I sang to him too, in his bath, and while I was rocking him on my lap at bedtime.
But halfway through my second, heartfelt rendition of ‘Make You Feel My Love’ he gave a gusty sigh.
‘Stop-it-I-don’t-like-it,’ he said, in a phrase I recognised from nursery. It was a form of words you were supposed to use (instead of shouting or crying) when another child pushed you, stole your breadstick or swiped your favourite toy. I wondered fleetingly whether it would work on Gretel: ‘Stop trying to steal my child. Stop-it-I-don’t-like-it.’
He’d only just closed his eyes when the doorbell rang. I tiptoed to answer it, willing him not to wake up.
Steve, please let it be Steve.
But it was Hattie on my doorstep, huddled in her coat with her hood up against the rain.
‘Hattie! I thought you were in London. You look frozen. You’re wet, come in!’
In the light of the hall I could see that she wasn’t wearing any make-up, or maybe the rain had washed it off. Her skin shone smooth and clear, c
heeks slightly flushed. She looked like she was about . . . twelve years old. So different from the flawless, hard-smiling Hattie who’d opened the door to me at Sutcliffe Heights on the day I’d found her again.
‘I should have given this to you to start with,’ she said, drawing a small black lacquered box out of her bag. ‘When you turned up at my flat.’
‘What is it?’
‘A bunch of letters I never sent.’
‘You came all the way over here and got yourself soaked through to—’
‘Not exactly. Oh Janey. I’ve worked it out.’
My heart hammered in my chest. I put out a hand and reached for the wall, feeling the plaster, with its wash of cream paint, cool under my touch. ‘Worked what out?’
‘This thing about James.’ She stepped forward and touched my arms. ‘All that hurt coming from the upstairs room when we were trying to have dinner. The blood pooling over the floor at the bottom of the staircase. Oh Janey. I know he hurt you. That fuckwit brother of mine hurt you. And something else. There was a baby, wasn’t there.’
*
I shook my head, gazed into her bright wet face, silently imploring her to leave it alone.
‘Janey?’
‘I can’t. I just can’t.’
But my nerves were singing, damn them, just under the surface of my skin. The things I’d buried the deepest were surfacing too.
It’s safe to tell you things. It’s just like telling myself.
35
Janey
It had been months before I’d faced up to what was happening, I told Hattie, while she sat on my sofa with a towel around her shoulders. Five, maybe nearer six. I’d never worked it out exactly.
The sickness had been bad all the way through, and late afternoon was the worst time for it. One particularly nauseous day, I had a lesson with Miss Fortune after school.
‘How have you been getting on with your composition?’ she asked, once I’d come in and sat down at the piano. ‘The Trees of Glen Eddle? Have you been thinking about those harmonies we talked about?’
