Still Falling

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  ‘Esther! It is nothing to do with the bloody epilepsy. And I do fancy you.’

  ‘Well, you’ve a funny way of showing it. And you know what – I’m tired of being your freaking comfort-blanket. Find another nursemaid.’

  He opens his mouth and says one word: ‘Bitch.’ And walks away, leaving me standing under the fairy lights, tears streaming down my face.

  Luke

  I need to get out of here.

  Drunken girls are splayed all over the drive – I have to step over them to get past and one of them goes, ‘Ow, that was my boob. That was my actual boob!’

  In the doorway, two girls are kissing, running their hands through each other’s long shiny hair. They’re drunk and pretty and their boyfriends are watching and laughing.

  I’ve rammed down a shutter in my brain over everything Esther’s just said, but bits of it creep out through the gap at the bottom.

  You don’t fancy me.

  Find another nursemaid.

  ‘Luke! What are you doing all on your own?’ Cassie shimmies over to me. Her hair’s piled messily on top of her head; you can see the dark roots. She holds out her hands to me. ‘Dance?’

  I shrug her off like a wasp. I’m leaving. But I left my jacket in there, in the cloakroom. It’s my only decent jacket. I know I’ll never get something that quality off Sandra and Bill – it’ll be Primark all the way, not that I’d ever wear it – so, despite wanting to walk away from this carnival now, I have to fight my way back in for it.

  The party isn’t quite so civilised now. Two rugby players are arguing, loudly, on the doorstep – ‘You frigging did – I frigging never – frigging did – frigging never.’ One of them is the stubbly ape from the try-out I never had. I have to push past a girl crying in the hall. She has dark hair and a green dress and for a minute I think – but it’s not.

  The table in the hall is still covered in glasses, most of them empty. I’ve never tasted champagne. Isn’t it meant to make you feel good? I stretch out my hand for one of the glasses and neck it back. The champagne is warmish, and flat after sitting out, but it tastes OK. Has absolutely no effect on me. I grab another couple of glasses for the road.

  Halfway down the drive – the same girls are smoking, lying full-length on the grass now even though it’s started to rain – someone grabs my arm. I swing round and the champagne fizzes over my hand before the bubbles die.

  ‘Careless! That’s £24.99 a bottle. Of course we only got the cheap stuff for my friends.’

  Jasmine.

  ‘You’re not leaving? Where’s Esther?’

  I shrug. ‘Somewhere. I don’t know.’

  The fairy lights make droplets of rain sparkle in her shining hair.

  ‘You haven’t fallen out, have you? How could anyone fall out with Esther? She’s so sweet.’ She widens her eyes. ‘I hope you haven’t hurt her feelings.’

  Of course you’ve hurt her. You were always going to hurt her. Better this way. For her.

  ‘Jasmine – it’s kind of none of your business.’

  She pouts. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just – you’re my friends. Both of you. I don’t want you falling out at my party. I want people to be happy.’ She makes a balletic gesture with her arms and looks up at the sky. ‘Happy!’ she repeats. Her pupils are huge. She is either very drunk or stoned. ‘Luke? Are you unhappy?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Cos you know you can talk to me.’

  We seem to be walking down the drive together, threading through the trees. At least I’m moving in the right direction. And I don’t want to leave too quickly in case I meet Esther at the bus stop. I take a sip of the champagne. This one tastes better – the bubbles fizz behind my nose and make me sneeze.

  Jasmine laughs. ‘One for a wish,’ she says. She looks at me expectantly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Two for a kiss?’

  I haven’t a notion what she’s on about.

  ‘You don’t have to leave – even if you’ve fallen out with Esther –’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  Bitch.

  ‘– because you haven’t fallen out with me, have you? And everybody’s here. Next year, when there’s a countdown of all the best parties in our leavers’ yearbook, this will be number two. Number one will be my eighteenth,’ she goes on, answering the question she clearly expected me to ask. ‘Why don’t you make friends with people? There’s more to life than Esther Wilson.’

  ‘I have friends. Toby.’

  ‘Oh, Toby.’ She leans in to me, overbalances a bit and giggles. She leans back against a huge tree. ‘You know what everybody thinks about you and Esther?’

  ‘I really couldn’t care less.’

  ‘Well – I’m not saying this to be mean – you know how she isn’t exactly in your league?’

  My second glass is empty now and if this girl doesn’t shut up she could be getting it in her face. Black, sour anger surges through me.

  ‘Jasmine, you won’t get anywhere with me by insulting Esther.’

  ‘And will I get anywhere with you any other way?’ She puts her hand on my sleeve. My arm trembles. The glass trembles.

  ‘Put that stupid glass down! The cleaner will find it in the morning.’

  She takes it from me and throws it behind her. It lands with a smash on the drive. She’s still caressing my arm with her other hand. I move back. She moves with me. The bark of the tree trunk is rough against my back even through my clothes.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she says.

  ‘Piss off.’

  ‘Just a bit of fun? It’s my party. It’s my birthday. And you didn’t bring me a birthday present, did you?’ Her fingers stroke her neck. ‘What about a birthday kiss, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  She pins me against the tree with both arms. She’s the same height as me; her lips are on a level with mine, her neck and cleavage are dappled with fairy lights.

  I’m shaking.

  My groin aches.

  ‘Don’t pretend,’ she whispers. She moves one hand down my body, stroking me, over my crotch. ‘See? You do like me. You only think you don’t.’

  See? You do like it. Don’t ever tell me you don’t, you little pervert.

  She leans in. Her hair tickles.

  ‘Come on, Lukey,’ she murmurs.

  Come on, Lukey.

  I grab her arms and fling her from me, so hard she slams against the tree. Her hands scrabble in the air and she clutches at the string of fairy lights. With a hiss the lights go out and the tree is plunged into dark.

  Esther

  I hate him.

  I lie on my bed and the tears soak into my ears and I hate him and hate him and hate him. I listen to Taylor Swift and wonder how my life turned into one of her songs.

  Mum hovers outside. I hear her heavy tread and feel her worry seep from behind the closed door.

  When I arrived home at nine o’clock I told her I had a headache, thought my period was coming, and I’d just go straight to bed. I know she didn’t believe me, but I was home before my curfew, sober and unmolested – practically untouched – so she couldn’t do anything about it.

  It’s not you. Thanks for the clichés.

  I pull the book down from the shelf. War poetry. Not love poetry. Well, of course not. And the card. Stupid ice-skating pony. Bitch. I plonk them both into the bin.

  Luke

  It doesn’t make sense to feel this drunk. I had – I don’t remember – but not that much champagne. But I feel like I did the few times at the start of this year when I was totally wasted. Not on champagne. I’m not falling-down drunk, but my steps weave a bit and I have to concentrate on keeping a straight line. I’m too wired to get the bus, so I walk. I don’t know this part of town but some instinct takes me down into the city centre and eventually to the main road at the far end of Sandra’s estate.

  It’s the rough end, where I never go if I can help it. Instead of terra
ced houses there’s two grey high-rise towers, a short parade of mostly boarded-up shops, and a row of garages with graffitied doors.

  I need to have my wits about me.

  And I don’t. My brain’s skidding around like a pony on an ice rink, like I’ve just had a seizure but I know I haven’t. When you have a seizure you fall, you land, and it’s over. You feel like shit, and maybe you’re bruised and you’re probably mortified, but you get back up. You sleep it off. Now I feel like I’m still falling. And I don’t know what I fell from, or where I’m going to land.

  Three guys my age lean against a row of garage doors, smoking, and check me out. I breathe in the sweet smell of dope, and concentrate on not making eye contact. I wish I was wearing my usual jeans and hoody. I want to know the quickest way to Lilac Walk but no way am I asking these hoods. I miss my footing at the edge of the wet footpath and career into a streetlight, grabbing at a tattered remnant of Union Jack to keep my footing.

  ‘Oy, mind our fleg,’ calls one of the kids.

  ‘We’ll frigging do you if you touch that,’ says his mate.

  Something stupid in me nearly shouts abuse at them, because something stupid in me wants these lads to give me a kicking, to let the bruising and the walloping of my body to the ground blot out the memory of the party. But I’m not that pissed, and there’s no guarantee that they’d stop at a kicking.

  ‘All right,’ I say, using the accent I used to turn on and off at the school gates at Belvedere for reasons of survival. I walk on, waiting for the jump behind me but it never comes.

  This street is wider, and below me I can see the neon sign of the Spar, and I know my way from there.

  Am I ever going to have a normal night out? I don’t even know what went wrong tonight. Last time I could blame the epilepsy, but tonight – it was just Esther going all weird and then Jasmine – God, how did that all happen?

  And what exactly did happen?

  Come on, Lukey, she said.

  My insides reel. I feel filthy, sick. I wish I could puke it all out, get rid of it, get rid of the whole horrible evening, let the rain swirl it all away.

  Because you are sick.

  But it started OK, Esther so gorgeous in her silky greenish dress, and so warm and happy to see me, and then so – what did she say – Find yourself another nursemaid.

  Bitch.

  And Jasmine –

  No. Can’t go there.

  I want to go to bed and not talk to anybody but Sandra pulls open the living-room door just as I set foot on the first stair. Canned laughter booms from the TV.

  ‘Good party?’ Her voice is all hopeful and interested. ‘D’you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘You’re in a strange mood, son.’

  ‘How would you know? You don’t know me. And I’m not your fucking son.’

  ‘Luke!’ Bill zaps the remote at the TV and mutes it. ‘Don’t speak to your – to Sandra like that.’ He sounds crosser than I’ve ever heard him. He looks at me closely. ‘Are you on something, lad?’

  You’re right, Lukey. They don’t know you. They wouldn’t want to. But I do, don’t I?

  ‘No!’ I slam out and upstairs and into my room. I don’t turn the light on but as I lie on my bed I feel the walls and ceiling dip and swirl even though I can’t see them. I don’t know if I’m drunk or sober. I don’t like the way I smell; I don’t smell of myself or Esther, I smell of Jasmine’s strong spicy perfume.

  I wake up still on top of the bed, still in my clothes, and it’s morning and I feel like shit. I stay in my room and try to read. I’m hung-over but I don’t know if it’s from drinking or something else. I’m desperate for air. I sit by the open window. I should go out for a run or a cycle or something, but the Sunday streets look like they’re lying in wait for me.

  I take out my sketchbook. It’s getting pretty full now. I don’t look at the pictures of Esther. I take out paints and try to paint without thinking too much, but all that comes out is a scribbled mess.

  Sandra calls me down for lunch in the voice you don’t argue with. I’m not hungry but I know there’ll be a lecture if I don’t eat so I choke down potatoes and roast beef. Bill talks about creosoting the back fence. I take my pills. I catch Bill’s eye and he looks puzzled. I want to say sorry for being so grumpy last night but how can I? Better just act like it never happened.

  Just act like it all never happened.

  But it did happen, Lukey.

  Like you always knew it would.

  Esther

  It’s clear from the snatches of conversation behind me that the party got much wilder after I left. I write forward dates in my homework diary like it’s the most important thing in the world to have all the subjects filled in until December.

  ‘And I swear I am never drinking the blue ones again.’

  ‘So I was just, like –’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Did you see the pictures?’

  This is a first for me. Actually having been – briefly – at the party all the gossip’s about. For years this was my dream. Now it’s a nightmare. At least I’m not important enough for anyone to be gossiping about me. I don’t suppose Jasmine even noticed me leaving.

  Luke comes in late. Baxter frowns. There’s an empty seat beside Toby. Luke sits in it. He doesn’t look at me, or anyone. He doesn’t apologise to Baxter. The chat behind me dies away.

  I hate him. I write it in my diary. Lightly, letting the pen just skate over the surface of the paper, then digging deeper. It stands out in blue.

  I hate him. I outline it in red.

  At the end of tutor group, Jasmine and Cassie flounce past Luke arm in arm, without a word, their hair swinging. Weird. Last week I’d have loved Jasmine to be ignoring Luke, but now – it’s like there’s something going on I don’t get.

  Luke and I arrive at the classroom door at the same time. How can you hate someone when the sight of their fingers on the door handle makes your stomach flip? When the familiar smell of their shampoo makes you forget to breathe?

  If he apologises. If he says, Meet me at the war memorial at break time, I’ll stop hating him.

  ‘After you.’ He waves me through like I’m an old lady in a bus queue.

  I hate him.

  Art and French are a relief. He’s in economics, then maths.

  At lunchtime I go to the sixth form centre. I sit in the coffee bar with a yogurt I don’t want. I scrape the lid and concentrate on licking yogurt off my spoon. I play with my phone. There are no messages and it won’t go online – the signal’s always erratic in the coffee bar – but it’s something to look at since I’ve forgotten to bring a book.

  I become aware of someone sitting down opposite me. I look up. ‘Cassie.’ I haven’t seen her without Jasmine for weeks. She’s looking at me the way you’d look at someone whose entire family had just been gunned down by a maniac.

  ‘Esther,’ she says. Before I can stop her she places her icy white fingers on my arm. ‘How are you – you know – bearing up?’

  ‘To what?’ A slurp of yogurt goes down the wrong way and I cough. Is this something to do with me and Luke falling out? Do people know? And what business is it of Cassie’s?

  ‘You shouldn’t bottle it up,’ Cassie goes on.

  ‘Bottle what up?’

  She plays with the end of her hair. ‘I mean – Jas and I have been saying – God knows what you’ve been putting up with all this time. But there are people you can talk to.’

  ‘Am I meant to know what you’re on about?’

  ‘Luke, of course. I mean – I saw the bruises. And she was crying – she was in a terrible state. Lucky I was there to look after her. It took me ages to calm her down. Poor Jas.’ Her eyes gleam.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ The yogurt curdles inside me. Luke? Jasmine? Luke and Jasmine? But what does she mean bruises?

  I know one thing. Whatever
’s going on, I don’t want to hear one more syllable of it from Cassie Morris.

  ‘Where’s Jasmine?’ I demand. Maybe I’ll get some sense out of her.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Cassie bristles with importance. ‘The nurse sent her home. She was in an awful state. I suppose – seeing him – it was just too much for her.’

  I swallow down dread.

  ‘Do you like it rough?’ she goes on, as if she’s asking me what flavour my yogurt is. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were the kinky type.’

  I find my voice. ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  Cassie steps back. Her panda eyes goggle. ‘Luke. At the party. After you left. He forced himself on her. She only just got away.’

  ‘That’s – impossible.’ I can hardly force the words out.

  ‘I’ve seen the bruises.’

  I stand up. The coffee bar spins and reels. Don’t, I tell myself. Don’t assume it’s true. This is Cassie. Drama queen. Fantasist. Bitch.

  I turn and walk away. I have to get out of the sixth-form centre before I cry or scream or throw up. I could do all three very easily.

  The nightmare twists tighter.

  He forced himself on her.

  What does that even mean?

  Words jab at my brain.

  I’ve seen the bruises.

  She was in a terrible state.

  I blunder down the steps out of the sixth-form centre, thoughts racing round my head like frightened insects.

  Luke wouldn’t do that. If he was the slightest bit violent or – forceful – I would know.

  What about that RE class? What about my birthday?

  No. Those were completely different situations. And they were both directed at a man – at my dad – not at girls.

  Be careful, Esther, Mum said.

  The bell clangs right above me and makes me jump. It’s history. With Luke. I can’t sit in class and look at him. It was bad enough before; it would be impossible now.