by Anna Maxted
Stuart must have seen something in my eyes because he shut up. And grinned. His teeth were red.
I giggled. ‘You look like Dracula.’
His smile drooped. He groaned. ‘I feel dizzy.’
I felt terrible. ‘Stuart’ – I had to concentrate not to pronounce it Schtuarch – ‘Stuart, do you want me to get the club to call you a cab?’
He looked alarmed. ‘No, no. My car’s here.’
‘But you’ve been drinking.’
‘No, I haven’t. Honest. Holly, don’t look at me like that! It’s true, I haven’t. If I drive, I don’t drink. Ooof.’ He put a hand to his chin and winced. ‘But, maybe I could do with a chaperone and you could do with a lift. I don’t want to tear you away though. What time is it?’
Bizarrely, this reminded me of when Nick and I were about to catch an internal flight from New York and our pilot sat beside us in the waiting area. Nick doesn’t wear a watch and I’d broken mine. I whispered to him, ‘What’s the time on the pilot’s watch?’ Nick – to whom my fear of flying was, like everything, a joke – glanced at it, turned his voice Hollywood and boomed in an evil husk, ‘Time to die!’
‘It’s a quarter to twelve,’ I told Stuart.
I’d planned to stay till the end, but then it nearly was chucking-out time. No one needed me – all my babies were walking, talking just fine. Their loving mother, however, could barely stand. A lift would be great. It would serve Nick right. And I owed it to Stuart. Poor guy, his jaw was caked in blood.
‘If you’re getting dizzy spells, I ought to stay with you. But my house is miles out of your way.’
He smiled. His teeth were pink. ‘Listen to yourself, Hol. There’s such a thing as being too proud.’
Of all the cheek.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Stuart seemed alert until we turned into my road, then he zigzagged the car. I yelped and grabbed the wheel.
‘Sorry! Christ, my head. What a weird sensation, all buzzy, like I was floating. I didn’t know where I was for a second. Something must have jolted when Nick attacked me. We’re okay though. We’re safe.’
My heart fluttered out of nowhere. I ignored it. ‘Look Pull in here. I’m a minute up the road. Come in, have a glass of water, then you can take a taxi from mine. It’s too dangerous to drive.’
We wove along the road together, then I unlocked my door and stood aside to let Stuart into my home. Mean though it was, I felt irritated. I’m past the age where a party is a failure unless you socialise till dawn. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I enjoy being in bed asleep by midnight. It was one of the few perks of being engaged. And you know what? Compared to some of my friends, that’s late. Truth was, I was too tired and drunk and old to play geisha to this guy and, while it wasn’t his fault, I was annoyed with him for making me.
‘Do you want some water then?’ I said, hoping the grudge didn’t show in my voice.
‘No, Holly,’ he replied. ‘I want you.’
I felt myself being kissed before I had agreed to it. Stuart’s hands were hard everywhere, plucking at my clothes. You don’t think a man is that much stronger than you, until he is. My legs and arms felt weak and light, my heart was racing again. This time I didn’t ignore it.
‘Let’s slow down,’ I said.
‘Why? Don’t you like me?’ He smiled. His teeth were white. Oh Grandma, what big teeth you have. And suddenly I knew I was in trouble.
Chapter 5
IT’S NOT AS if he leapt on me in an alleyway with a knife. Maybe he misunderstood me. But he had that smile on his face as if he didn’t want to stop. I tried to pick off his hands. Imagine trying to remove a wheel clamp with your fingers. I said, ‘It’s too soon.’ I thought that was a fair compromise. But he didn’t respond, he just kept kissing me, pinchily dragging off my clothes like he hadn’t heard. He pushed me flat on the floor, his shoulder was pinning down my neck. Then he prised apart my legs with his knee. My hands were at my pelvis, pressing upwards with flat palms to keep him off me but it seemed that he merely brushed them out of the way. The fear was so black and thick it was like drowning in tar. I got stiff with panic, breathing in quick little gasps, and he murmured, ‘Relax, sshhhh, relax, enjoy it,’ but he wouldn’t look at me, and then I couldn’t speak. It was as if my eyesight was a watercolour that had got wet. I was seeing in reds and oranges, my vision blurred and ran.
I’d never been treated like that. I lay there like a helpless twit, I had no idea how to defend myself. So I focused elsewhere. I’m a coward when it comes down to it. I don’t like to get hurt. I see it in Emily when she has to get her injection. At first she’s all scratch, wriggle and hiss, not ssssssssss like a snake; a cat’s hiss is more venomous, hhaaaaaaaaaaach! And then survival instinct numbs her and she goes limp. I never liked it when she gave up, I preferred her to bite me, I hated to see the end of hope. Then I did it myself and I understood her.
Nick says it takes a lot of little burns to understand what a big burn feels like. You learn to be afraid of fire. My problem was, I’d never been burnt. I probably should have been.
When I was fourteen, I got into a stranger’s car, mainly out of laziness. I was going to visit a friend, took the wrong bus and got lost in suburbia. So I approached some guy coming out of a shop, and asked if he knew where this road was. No, but he had a map in his car. Well, I watched myself trot down a side street after him, and when he said, ‘Look, it’s only there, I could give you a lift,’ I heard myself accept. Guess what? He dropped me at my friend’s door, and when I thanked him he replied, ‘No problem, it’s my first time in London, and I’d hope someone would do the same for me.’ Yeah, I thought, they won’t.
My friend freaked out. Holly, are you mad, etc. No, merely invincible. I’m highly intelligent, I could tell he was harmless. Believe me, I am alert to danger. I give people the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not suicidal about it. For instance.
One night a few years back, I was on the tube and two middle-aged men sat opposite me. One looked as if he was on drugs, scruffy, crazy, and the other, mean and big. They kept trying to scare me. I’m not kidding. The druggy one leapt out of his seat and screamed ‘Raaaaaaaarrrrrrrrr!’ in my face. I jumped halfway to the ceiling and they keeled over laughing. All the potential heroes in the carriage looked away. What was I going to do? Quip, ‘Aren’t you big and brave, picking on me’? No way. Fear told me to move carriage and I did.
Afterwards I was cross. Why would anyone be like that? How dare they? But I was annoyed With myself too. I’d run away! Why didn’t I stand up for myself? What could they have done to me in a carriage of people? Stabbed me and jumped on my head, apparently, but I was spitting that I hadn’t fought back, not so much as a squeak. Truth was, I physically couldn’t. And I don’t mean in the sense that they were bigger than me. I mean that my body plain wouldn’t let me. Its every message service was yelling, insistent, get out of here now. I’d obeyed like a robot.
Not this time. I thought I was being sensible. No woman wants to be thought of as hysterical. I knew I didn’t want Stuart alone with me in my house but I forced myself to be mature, rational. My system jangled warning signals but I blocked my ears. You know why? I was too damn polite. It reminds me of an advert, warning against cancer of the bottom or something, it says, Don’t Die of Embarrassment. Obviously the medical establishment is aware that a good half of the population think, ‘What! Let a doctor poke around down there? No way! What if it smelt of pooh? Of course I choose to die of embarrassment!’
I didn’t want to offend Stuart.
He was practically a friend. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by not trusting him. I like being decent, it’s not very butch but it makes me feel good inside. If you want to live with yourself, you have to uphold at least a few of your own principles. When I bought Rachel a priceless bottle of Decléor face oil for her birthday I was twitching, I so badly wanted to keep the free tube of Anti-Fatigue Eye Contour Gel that came with it, but it felt shoddy, swindling he
r out of her bonus gift. I hummed and ha’d, nearly gave it to her, and then I kept it. Good grief! Every time I saw it lying unused on the kitchen table, I felt like Judas. The guilt killed me, I had to buy her the Aromatic Essential Balm to restore my faith in myself.
Nick slammed into the house halfway through. Stuart kicked the kitchen door shut. I was too frightened to scream. There were a million thoughts going through my head and nothing at all. It was as if I wasn’t even there. I was aware of being jolted, of my arms being held above my head, but mostly I was out of myself. When I’m on a plane waiting for it to crash, I dream of elsewhere. I imagine Emily, a warm little black dot, curled up in a ball on our bed, I imagine my mother pottering in the garden, her knees clicking as she bends down, I imagine my father whistling as he polishes his shoes on a newspaper in the kitchen, and it keeps the plane in the air because as long as they’re with me nothing bad can happen.
And so I imagined my parents, asleep in their pyjamas under their bobbly old eiderdown. I just went to them, slipped out of my body like a ghost, they were so real I could have been hovering over their heads. I thought of Emily, sprawled in the sunshine, hot, God but that cat loves to bake herself like a potato. I thought of me in my tent house when I was small, draping a sheet over a chair and crouching beneath it, all my toys gathered about me like courtiers before a queen. Who’d have thought that little girl would come to this? ‘I want to be as close to you as I can,’ whispered Stuart to someone. Then he turned the stereo up. U2. In a way I was glad it was U2. I can’t stand their music. It would have been a real bastard had it been Air, or Zero Seven or any band I really like.
I didn’t wish that Nick would come in to the kitchen; it was too late to wish for anything. I heard the front door slam again, anyway. And then Stuart got off me and said, ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’ I didn’t reply. It sounded wrong. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he added. ‘You should get dressed, you’ll get cold on the floor.’ I shook my head and nodded but I couldn’t look up from the level I was at, which was cat level. You’d think if you were that low you’d be invisible to predators but you’re not. Unless, of course, the predator is wearing a head trumpet and can only see straight ahead. It’s like in films when the goodie is hiding on a ceiling beam and the baddie doesn’t spot him. If there’s a person hiding on the ceiling, pardon me but you’re aware of it.
‘I’d better be going,’ said Stuart, who seemed to be having a conversation entirely with himself. ‘I’ll call you. Bye-bye. I’ll see myself out.’ The way he said it, I nearly replied, ‘Okay, thanks!’
My hand reached out and turned off the stereo. I realised I wasn’t breathing automatically, and I had to sniff and pant to let the air in. I wondered if he had really gone. Claudia is scared of spiders and when she sees one she vacuums it up, then leaves the vacuum on for three hours in case it tries to crawl out again. I wished there was a version of that for humans. I didn’t want to move from where I was. So I stayed on the floor, looking at it, thinking that the little black and white tiles were better suited to a bathroom, the dirt and blood showed up too easily. Grey was a better colour for a kitchen floor.
I could have sat there till dawn, letting my mind dissolve to nothing, but Emily appeared, rubbed her head against my arm and said, ‘Miaowwww!’
‘Absolutely,’ I replied, and stood up to get a tin out of the cupboard. She purred, ‘prrt-rrr, prrt-rrr, prrt-rrr’ and it was the friendliest sound I ever heard. She spent two months in a cage at the vet’s after her owner gave up on her, and she remains embarrassingly grateful for the smallest attention. It took me a long time to open the tin. My hands were useless and weak, all the strength gone out of them. Emily did a little bunnyhop of excitement and nudged against me as I placed the bowl on her mat. I watched as she ate and thought how easy it would be to hurt her. You could break her leg, it would be like snapping a twig. Or kick her so hard in the stomach she’d bleed to death from the inside. I decided I should keep her indoors.
I switched on every light. I smelled like Stuart. I would have a bath. I felt calm. There was some sort of squabble going on in my head but I refused to be part of it. I double locked the front door and thought of all the horror films you see where the door is locked and the killer is inside the house. I was being ridiculous. I needed to go to the toilet. I went and it felt like someone was holding a lit match to my skin. But then, fuss fuss fuss, I’d felt sore after sex with Nick before. Sometimes you need to fuck fast, even though it looks undignified and you know that you’ll sting afterwards. It can be quite satisfying, that rawness. A secret reminder of your pleasingly passionate love life.
I wondered where Nick had gone and if he’d come back.
‘I think I can have a bath in my own home,’ I said loudly to the walls, as if they’d voiced disapproval. I turned on the hot tap. It squeaked as normal. Everything was normal. I didn’t want to be in the bathroom while the water ran, because then I couldn’t hear anything. So I took off all my clothes in the bedroom. Then I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t put on my dressing gown because I didn’t want it to touch my skin until I’d had a bath. I wanted to put my clothes in the machine right that minute, but I didn’t want to go downstairs naked. I stood, not deciding, until my lungs nearly burst and the bath ran over.
I didn’t know why I was being so weird. It was only sex that I didn’t want. Big deal. Who hasn’t had that before? Me, but so what. And, anyhow, maybe, subconsciously, I did want it. I’d asked him out. I’d kissed him on the mouth. I’d given him signals.
‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’ What rapist says that? That R word was a disgusting violent word and not a word I wished to use in context with myself. I was a big tough bruiser of a girl, not some gossamer victim. It could not be that thing because I had allowed it to happen. He was sweet afterwards. So I dumped my clothes on the floor and got in the bath. It felt like sulphuric acid but in a nice way.
I don’t know how long I lay in that bath but then the water got cold. So I got out, dried myself, pat pat pat, with a soft towel that rubbed like sandpaper, blowdried my hair – on, off, on, off every second so I could hear any creak in the house – and made a mental note to buy more soap. Then I put on my pyjamas, gathered up my clothes, marched downstairs, booted open the kitchen door, and every nothing noise roared loud in my head. I could hear the clock ticking like a deathwatch beetle, the hum of electricity was so penetrating it tickled my ears and made them itch. The house was alive with activity. I rolled my eyes at myself, stuffed the clothes in the machine and stuck it on a boil wash.
Then I saw the state of the tiles.
I squirted bleach on the polluted area and scrubbed it with a scouring pad, but you can never clean just a bit of the floor. I always try, then I envisage my sister Issy floating over my head. So I cleaned the whole thing. By the time I’d finished, the washing machine had ended its cycle. I pulled out my pink cashmere jumper. It was the size of a hankerchief. Really. It was too small to fit a doll. For goodness’ sake. I started to huff and puff, and pull at the arms – why, don’t ask, it was like trying to get a Mini to grow into a tank – and then I tutted and threw it and all my other sodden clothes in the bin. Why was I getting so uptight? These things happen, Jesus, I’d go to the shop tomorrow, I’d replace the jumper, get a new one. It wasn’t a problem. Most damage can be undone.
Chapter 6
‘TRIUMPH!’ CRIED NIGE, making me jump when I walked into the office. He was wearing rose-tinted shades, a white shirt, white jeans and a smug look on his face. Thankfully, he’d drawn the line at white shoes. ‘Sunshine. Arse. Behold!’
‘For the ninetieth time keep your voice down,’ whispered Claudia, as pale as Nige’s outfit. She scowled at a tub of Nurofen. ‘These pills must be sugar pills.’
Nige amended his pitch to a deafening whisper. ‘Twenty-three messages when I got in, er, at nine fift—’
‘You got in at eleven forty-nine, Nigel, like Holly cares. And will you s
top, I don’t know what you call it, throwing your voice. You’re in an eight by ten office in front of two people with hangovers, not on stage at the National. Stop rehearsing on me, please.’
‘Twenty-three messages raving about the party,’ echoed Nige, in a tone as rich and seductive as warm chocolate. ‘At my club.’
He beamed at me, a kid presenting a picture to a parent. I was observing from a great distance, but I cracked a smile. It was cosmetic. Who, I thought, is this person, really? Is he thrilled or is he pretending to be thrilled? He is an actor, his métier (as he’d say) is deceit. Nige can recite ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ and make it sound like a sonnet. All the world is a stage for him. I’ve watched him when he thinks he’s alone. He’s like an unread book, inanimate, he needs an audience to be alive. Which means that everything he says or does is an act. I stopped smiling.
‘Success. Hooray. Wonderful. Well done.’
Nige sat down, disappointed. I think he’d expected an ovation.
Claudia looked at me. ‘So, Tallulah. Quiet today. What happened to you? Jesus Christ.’
There was a tennis ball lodged in my throat. ‘Talllulah? What do you mean?’
‘“What?” Don’t be coy. It’s obvious!’
‘Is it?’
My hands were trembling for no reason.
‘Nige. Help me out.’
Nige embraced his role with the eagerness of a dog falling on a chop. ‘Holly. We are your dear friends. You have alarmed us. An explanation silver plate, toot sweet.’
I felt like a mouse in a corner. I opened my mouth but all it contained was a squeak. Nige was having trouble holding back. Claudia smiled through the pain as he boomed, ‘Holly Appleton. The prosecution demands to know why, for the first time in twenty-nine years, you are not wearing on your person an item of clothing the colour pink?’
