A few minutes later and we pull up outside Beth's house.
‘Am I dropping you here then?’
‘Yeah, that's great Mum.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes Mum – the party is literally the next street over. Stop stressing.’
There follows a list of instructions about getting home, and front door keys, and alcohol, all of which Lowri agrees to grudgingly, until her mother drives off down the terraced-lined street.
As the rusty iron gate outside Beth’s house squeaks open, the excitement in my stomach turns to dread, as I think about seeing her parents. Oh god.
Her younger brother opens the door and smirks for some reason.
Maybe he knows?
Maybe he saw the state I was in the other night?
He yells up the stairs – ‘Beth!’
‘Jesus Christ Rhys, why don't you let the whole street know.’ Chris, Beth’s mum, appears from the living room, pulling an old bobbly cardigan across herself. She’s looking tired, and ready to settle down for the evening. The house is sweltering and the smell of their evening meal sticks to the pumping heat. I feel my cheeks start to burn, partly through the embarrassment and partly due to the warmth that I’m not used to, coming from my ice-box of a house.
‘Hiya girls, just go up – she’s upstairs preening.’
‘Thanks,’ says Lowri, as I smile sheepishly and we make our way up the stairs that creak and groan as we climb them.
Beth is sat cross-legged on her bed, layering mascara over her already-heavy lashes. ‘Hiya, won’t be long – this bloody stuff is a nightmare.’ Her attention is fixed on her eyes for a few more seconds before she flings the mascara and the mirror down on the quilt and turns to Lowri. ‘Who’s your friend?’ she says to her, before turning and looking me up and down.
‘Don’t – is it too much?’ The confidence that flowed only a few minutes ago starts to slip away.
‘Shut up will you, you look amazing. I knew that top would be great on you.’
‘I don’t know …’ I trail off, pulling the ‘V’ closer together to cover up my skin.
‘I’m sure Evan will.’ Lowri is smirking again, and her words are like some kind of drug, sending sensations shooting through me.
Beth smiles and reaches under the bed. The rustle of carrier bags and clinking glass escapes from underneath, as she pulls out a bottle of wine – white this time – and starts pouring it into the glasses that are also hiding there.
‘Let’s have a few before we go – we’ve got loads of time.’ The glug-glug sound of the alcohol leaving the bottle has us all captivated. ‘I’ve got us a couple of bottles,’ she says casually ‘and a little something extra.’
‘Cheers love, you’re a star.’ Lowri starts to knock it back like she can’t wait to get started. ‘I’m so up for tonight, I could do with a good laugh after being stuck in bed ill. What a shitty Christmas.’ She glances over at me – only for a fraction of a second – as if she realises what she has said. That her sore throat is anywhere near as ‘shitty’ as my first Christmas without my dad.
Keep a lid on it Seph … it’s Lowri … she didn’t mean it like that.
For a split-second I think about Beth’s parents downstairs, and of the throwing up and splitting headache that had me pinned to anything I could find – the floor, the sofa, the toilet seat. Then I raise the glass to my lips and take a sip of warm wine. It will be different tonight, I tell myself.
***
The music can be heard by the time we get to the bottom of Beth’s road. Turning the corner and ploughing up the hill to the next street, the activity increases – people making their way up the street, cars dropping off.
We’re at the corner of the street, and I can see people hovering outside what must be Lewis’s house.
My heart thumps against my chest. I feel like I shouldn’t be here – I don’t even know him really. Have I ever even spoken to the boy?
I look down at myself in these clothes, some of which aren’t even mine, and feel the urge to run, to take off down the street.
Somebody is behind me, shrieking, and then pushing past us to get into the party. Her heel slips on the curb and she almost tumbles into the road, laughing like a hyena.
I’m just about to turn to the girls and tell them I don’t feel well, that I need to go home, but then there he is, stepping out of a car and making his way into the house a short stretch ahead. I clutch onto the bottle that I’m carrying and keep on walking, my heart pushing against my ribcage like it’s trying to escape.
You can do this Seph. You can …
People are packed into the small rooms of the terraced house, strewn across floors, and gathered along the hallway and stairs. We push our way through as I cling onto the back of Beth’s jacket, and as we manage to get through to the kitchen at the back of the house, that’s where I find him, leaning against the kitchen counter, scrolling through his phone.
‘Come on Seph!’ yells Beth, obviously on purpose and that’s when he looks up. A smile works across his face, and I can tell that he’s glad to see me. I return the smile, trying to be warm, but keep my cool. Trying not to throw up with nerves, and excitement, and alcohol that I shouldn’t have drunk.
I’m standing next to him, and Beth has shoved a glass in my hand, then his arms are around my waist, and he’s looking into my eyes, before whispering things into my ear. He runs his fingers over my collarbone, where my name hangs.
‘Do you like it?’
My hand joins his there. ‘I love it, you shouldn’t have really – I feel so bad that I didn’t get you anything – I just didn’t-’
I can feel his lips on my neck, as he holds back the hair that is hanging over my shoulder.
For a moment – for some spellbinding moment – I move out of the prison of my head, letting the walls of fear and confusion and suffocating sadness collapse around me in a heap of black matter, that smokes away at my feet. I move into my body, that is coming back to life, in ways that it never has before.
I’m knocking back the sweet, warm liquid, glass after glass and everything is becoming blurred – wonderfully blurred. The noise in my head, the intoxicating feelings that are running around my body, the self-consciousness that ate away at me before I got to the party. The noise. The people. Fading away. I’m tracing my fingers across Evan’s stomach, lifting the thin material and running my hands across the top of his jeans and his hot bare skin, as he’s telling me about how much he missed me over Christmas, his breath catching as my hands slowly move.
My head spins with it all. I feel another arm around me and somebody plants a firm kiss on my cheek. Beth tries to wrap us both up in her embrace.
‘Get a room you two!’ Her face is flushed and pink tendrils fall across it. I sweep them away from her eyes and laugh. I feel deliriously happy – wrapped up between these two. Everything else fading away. There’s just this. Us.
‘Selfie,’ says Beth, her arm outstretched.
‘You hate selfies,’ I laugh.
‘Room for one more?’ Alex asks, making a crude gesture and grabbing Evan. My drink spills over Beth and she reaches out across us with her foot, trying to prod Alex, but misses. He laughs and then makes a grab for her, planting jokish kisses over her and saying, ‘Don’t worry, there’s plenty to go around.’
She’s trying not to laugh, so does what Beth does, and throws a load of swear words his way.
‘Back in a minute,’ I say to Evan. ‘Going to the toilet.’
I grab Beth, ‘Come with me.’
For a change I’m the one dragging her. Pulling her back through the kitchen and hallway and up the stairs where a queue of people, mainly girls, are standing outside – what I’m assuming – is the bathroom door.
Her arm is draped around my neck and she’s telling me how cute we are together and my head is spinning, and now my stomach. No. I’ve been here before – I rest my head back on the wall to stop the whirling around that is taking place
inside me.
‘You alright Seph? Just take a few deep breaths.’
‘Yeah – think I’ll be ok.’
Finally I get into the bathroom. I do what I need to and then rinse my hands in cold water, taking a sip from the tap and then looking up to inspect myself in the mirror. Red smears are etched onto it – what looks like lipstick. From what I can see I actually feel worse than I look. I check for any stray make-up and tip my head back to shake out my hair, then tip it forward again.
At first I assume that it’s the red lipstick on the mirror that’s smeared across my face.
It’s not.
It’s her face or my face or our faces – running with crimson - eyes wide, hair caked and matted.
Her face. My face.
Then she’s in front of me, screaming, as the mirror cracks and the cabinet door flies open and bottles and packets are flung across the small room, hitting me, smashing against the walls. My head hits the door as I fall, thrown backwards, and there is more spinning until I manage to open my eyes and look around at the perfectly normal bathroom.
But there’s pounding now on the wood behind me.
‘Are you OK in there – what’s going on?’
My hands reach behind me, scratching away for the lock and I pull myself up by the handle and run, out of the door, down the stairs, pushing past people as they look at me confused or annoyed. Through the hall, past the living room, stumbling through the kitchen and the back-door where the cold blast smacks me in the face and chest as I gasp for air.
I can hear my name being called as Evan appears, looking confused and concerned. ‘What’s going on? You’re white as a ghost?’
‘Too much to drink,’ I lie, unconvincingly.
‘What’s happening Seph – just tell me?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Drop it – it’s nothing.’
‘You’re doing my head in, just say!’
‘Leave me alone!’
He recoils, shocked and hurt by my aggression. I leave him standing there and push past him, out through the back gate and into the alley, dodging rubbish bags and wheelie bins and yet more people that are hanging around.
The noise quietens slightly as I turn the street corner, up into the next row of terraces and huddle on a step, finally alone. The drumming in my chest is deafening. Her face is etched onto the back of my eyelids as I rock gently back and forth, eyes closed on the cold stone step.
My phone buzzes and pings, then starts to ring, so I switch it off. The thumping inside me gets steadily quieter and I can hear the party again now. The shouting, the laughing and shrieking, a man’s voice telling everyone to keep the noise down. The wheels of a car screeching down the road.
I need to find Beth.
I’m going to tell her … everything.
I’m up, making my way back to the party, following the noise. As I reach the corner I see Evan walking off, his phone at his ear – probably looking for me. I wait for him to disappear around the corner.
I’m back in through the gate and the open front door, and peer around the corner into the living room, where, somewhere in the dark, amongst the tightly packed in bodies I see Lowri and Alex huddled together, kissing. What the-?
But no Beth.
The kitchen, the stairs, the bathroom, the back garden. Not there. I bang on the bedroom doors where people tell me where to go. None of them Beth.
Frustrated, I go back out the front and see some of the boys from school that I know.
‘Hiya – you seen Beth?’
‘Alright Seph? Yeah, she was out ’ere a few minutes ago.’
Thank God.
I switch my phone back on, but there’s no signal yet and it’s taking forever to come back to life.
‘Where’d she go?’
‘She left.’
‘What? Who with?’
‘Dunno – she was out here talking to some bloke in a white van. Driving like a dick he was – took the wing-mirror off that Fiesta.’
I can’t even take it all in.
‘Hey – don’t your uncle drive a white van?’
49
I CAN’T RUN ANYfaster and my lungs are straining as I throw myself up the hill, past the terraced streets and up to the lane. Adrenaline surges through me – giving me strength that I never knew possible and I’m running and running and I’ll find him. Find her.
The lanes are black and I should be stinging with fear being out here, but the only fear I have is for Beth.
God no … please not Beth.
I’m going as fast as I can but there’s nothing and this lane is taking forever, until up ahead I see the light that is coming from our house. The dull light escaping from the living room window … and the headlights of his van.
Beth … ?
The last few metres up to the house seem like a lifetime, and by the time I get to the bottom of the farmhouse road there is no breath left in my body.
The house looks down on me. The tree seems to watch as I pass it, and I can hear the van engine still running. It’s pitch black, and the headlights pierce the night, letting me see the streaked bloody handprints that run along the side-panel of the door.
Just as I’m about to collapse into a heap, I see that the front door is open and find myself there. Going in. Following the red streaks that are dotted along the wall of the stairs. Up the stairs, where I can hear sobbing and groaning and ….
Gabe’s room.
I push gently at the door and it opens, and I see him – head in red hands on the bed. He looks up and I see that his face is marked – his neck too.
His face twists as he sees me standing there, and now as he lunges at me I know that this is it.
50
I’M GONE.
Gone.
No Gabe. No house. Just me.
‘Seph – on – eeee.’
And him.
My arms are crossed, tight against my body, tied at the back with a thick ribbon of white, the same material that swaddles my chest, my stomach, presses against me and I am tired, so tired as I sit on the cold concrete floor, in the locked room.
No light, no desire to move, to struggle against it all.
It would always come to this.
I know that. I have felt it and fought it for as long as I can remember – that thing under my skin. What it was, or how it got there I do not know, but it was there and it has crept up slowly, gently, like a spider feeling its way with black silent sprawling legs over the rough stone of the fireplace. That thing that we see out of the corner of our eye. That thing that disappears when you turn to look at it, making you question whether it was even there in the first place.
I feel his footsteps – slow and steady – heels digging into the ground outside, yet leaving no trace, and I have no choice but to sit and wait. Wait for them to hit the concrete corridor that will bring him to my locked door. This building. This room.
The rattle of the keys in his hand.
I feel my eyelids droop and the pull of sleep, tugging harder and harder, and I am going – letting go and giving in and my head falls forward and back and forward and back and …
And then he is there … in front of me as clear as day as I fight to hold open my eyes … he is there and my father’s voice calls out my name, calm and clear …
I see you.
His body … his face smiling at me calling my name over and over … he’s holding something and stretches out his arm to give it to me.
‘Take it,’ he’s saying over and over … but my hands are tied.
I am bound. I am tired. I can’t …
I can now hear the footsteps outside on the corridor and they’re getting closer and I am bound and my father is still there and I hear the rattling and the key in the lock and the turn of the key and the lock releasing from the latch and in front of me my father stands with his arm outstretched and the door is now opening and he yells the same words one more time ‘Ta
ke it!’ then I move my arms and they become free and the white straps falls to the floor and my hand reaches out to his.
51
THE VICE-LIKE GRIP on my shoulders shocks me awake, and the shouting of my name, and the spit that lands on my face, and then my eyes are open and I see him there. His face is pushed up close to mine, and the whites of his eyes are threaded with red.
I feel like prey.
Pinned to the ground.
As I come around I see that I am lying on the dew-drenched grass of a field and am clutching something in my right hand – a stem of grass or-?
Terror starts to pulse through me, and just before the scream makes it into being, Gabe leans down and whispers something into my ear. It’s incomprehensible.
His arms wrap around me, saying my name over and over, then sobbing quietly he says, ‘I thought we’d lost you forever.’
52
THE COLD SEEMS TO have taken root inside my whole body. Gabe blasts the van heaters as we drive back home, but even that, and the coat and blanket he has wrapped around me doesn’t seem to shift the icy sting that cuts right through me.
It is morning, but there is no sun. Black lifeless trees press against the low steel-grey sky, making them seem unreal, as if they have been painted onto the landscape.
I have nothing left. Even if he were to drive me somewhere to end it all I couldn’t even begin to fight back. But from the way he was looking at me, the way he was crying, something tells me that this won’t be the case. The only word that can make its way out is, ‘Beth?’
‘She was looking for you last night – after you disappeared from the party. We all were.’
He sounds angry.
‘Is she OK?’
‘Course she is – apart from worrying about you.’
He’s definitely angry.
As the car crawls up to the house the tree reaches out to me again. My focus is pinned there. Gabe notices, like he has read my mind, and the furrow between his brows sits there strong and silent, yet speaks volumes.
The Twist in the Branch Page 15
