I didn’t know why I was sharing those old, worn-out excuses with Theo. Maybe it was because I was so used to them being trotted out but knew Dec’s dad wouldn’t be able to use them himself this time.
‘He has this window, this slot of time where he’s the right balance of not in withdrawal or so wasted that all he can do is shout and lash out. And I’m not saying that that window is who he really is, or anything, but he’s an okay guy during it: he buys Dec and his mum presents or tells these stories about growing up on a cattle station. Dec has – we’ve all – spent our lives trying to catch that window.’
I was aware that I was talking about Dec’s dad in the present tense, but I couldn’t help it. My head felt hot and heavy, like all the tears I wasn’t allowing myself to shed were building up and it was just so hard to think clearly.
‘It’s not a sob story or an excuse.’ It suddenly seemed important for Theo to understand this. ‘But it’s how Dec learnt to live his life, in a constant churn of avoiding his dad or cleaning up after him. He was fifteen when he finally convinced his mum to kick his dad out and got him into his first shelter. By then his dad had major liver problems and Dec had learnt how to defend himself and his mum if he . . . Dec’s dad always reckoned he was going clean himself up and he even started going to the A&D clinics in the last few years. Never lasted long, though – he’d get kicked out or disappear from a hostel and Dec and I, Zoë, too, back in the day, we’d all go out looking for him to make sure he didn’t cause Dec’s mum trouble or die in a ditch somewhere.’ My voice caught, but I pushed past it, suddenly desperate for Theo to get the significance of where we were headed.
‘You should’ve seen Dec when he found out that ADS – Alcohol Dependence Syndrome, I mean, that’s what the doctors call it – is genetic. He was so scared and so angry. He doesn’t want to be like his dad so he’s never drank, never, but he – he was drunk, Theo, when I talked to him just before, he was drunk and–’ I broke off again, but this time there was no talking past what felt like the wedge of concrete that’d been forced into my throat.
‘I’m getting you there as fast as I can, sweetheart, just hold on a few more minutes.’
I vaguely registered that Theo had called me ‘sweetheart’ again, but had nowhere left in my head to put that information, so just let it go.
He was true to his word. He swerved expertly through the traffic, sometimes allowing himself to be led by his car’s sat nav, sometimes choosing his own route. I appreciated he was doing all he could, but, as I sat there dialling and redialling Dec’s number with no success, I felt almost angry at him for sticking to the roads. Why couldn’t he take us as the crow flew? It felt so stupid to be going in anything other than a straight line to where Dec was.
When we finally pulled into the car park of The Duchess, we saw that it was host to a desultory scattering of vehicles that’d seen better days. Almost half the neon lights advertising the bar’s existence were out, so the reflection in the shiny hood of Theo’s car announced that we were being welcomed to ‘Th uch ss’.
I fumbled at the door handle, but stopped as I saw Theo open his own door and start to swing himself out.
‘No, you can’t come in,’ I said quickly.
‘Giovanna–’ he began, but I jumped out and rounded the car, planning to push him back inside.
‘You can’t,’ I insisted. ‘Dec wouldn’t want you to . . . I shouldn’t even have told you what I did on the way here, and–’
‘I’ll hang back, I won’t go near Declan if you don’t want me to, but you’re not going in there on your own.’
I was just about to protest again when I heard someone call my name, and looked up to see Zoë running towards us, her face pale, her already large eyes seeming to engulf her face in her anxiety.
‘Why’re you out here?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Isn’t he in there?’
‘I’m trying to get Theo to stay here–’ I began, breaking off as she looked at me incredulously.
‘Stay here? Don’t be stupid! Neither of us are going to be strong enough to drag Dec out, are we? Come on!’
With one last imploring look at Theo, I ran after Zoë, catching the heavy wooden doors behind her and entering the dingy, depressing, time-warp of a pub. The poker machines that I’d heard in the background of the call with Dec were clattering and jangling discordantly off to the left, a pool table with heavily patched felt was to the right and, in front of us–
‘There.’ Zoë spotted him first, and we both rushed to where Dec sat, still in his work suit, slumped over the bar clutching a squat glass of amber liquid.
‘Dec?’ I asked softly as we approached, and he blearily lifted his head, focusing on Zoë and me with more difficulty than seemed necessary in the warmly lit room.
‘Baker! Beauty!’ His glassy eyes slid past us. ‘And Killer, too! The gang’s all here!’
I looked back to see that Theo had followed us in and was standing, arms crossed, just inside the door. When I caught his eye, he gave the briefest nod. He was staying put. And, actually, now we were inside, it was reassuring to know he was there. The other clientele of The Duchess were, with only one or two exceptions, rough as guts-looking men who were staring at us with undisguised curiosity.
Zoë glared back at a couple of them and then grabbed at Dec’s arm. ‘C’mon,’ she hissed, ‘get your arse up and let’s go.’
He resisted her tugging and pointed at her with the hand still holding the glass. ‘Ah, Beauty, the beautiful beauty. Don’t look at me like that. You know what this is, doncha? This is you but for the grace and all that. But your mum stuck to weed, didn’t she? Lucky, lucky you and your stoner mum.’
Zoë and I exchanged a look. We never spoke so openly about why Dec and Zoë had spent so much time holed up at Aggie’s place when we were growing up.
Always the first to rally, Zoë snapped, ‘Yeah, nothing says “lucky” like your mum not needing to be drunk to hit you. Can we go now?’
‘Nah, pull up a stool, get yourselves a drink. I’ll pay, I’m rich now, y’know? The boy from Jarli come good.’
‘You can pay for my drink if you want!’ someone further down the bar shouted, and there was a chorus of guffaws that Dec smiled lopsidedly at.
‘We don’t want drinks,’ I said quietly, ‘we want to go.’
‘Why don’t you want drinks?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t got a genetic pre-thing, a predistition,’ he stumbled awkwardly over the word, but it seemed to amuse, rather than embarrass him. ‘You can have as much as you want to drink and – y’know what? – so can I, because fuck it! What’s not drinking done for me? Didn’t stop me screwing up my life anyway, did it? Didn’t stop me being a dick to you two or fucking up at work. Didn’t stop the cops coming in and telling me my old man’s dead in front of everyone. Like they thought I’d care.’
Maybe part of it was the alcohol slurring his words, but his Jarli accent was stronger than I’d heard it in years. It was the drawl we all occasionally slipped into, the one each of us had tried to leave behind when we’d left school.
He drained his glass and then gestured at the bartender for another. As the man trundled towards us, however, Zoë stopped him with a glare.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she told him crisply and he held up his hands in surrender.
‘Hey!’ Dec protested. ‘I want another drink.’
‘I think you’ve had enough,’ I said gently and he rolled his head around to look at me.
‘What is enough?’ he asked philosophically. ‘What I’ve had wouldn’t’ve touched the old boy’s sides.’
‘Yeah, well your dad is hardly a role model, is he?’ Zoë pointed out.
‘Was,’ Dec corrected her, and then he let out the same weird laugh I’d heard him make before. ‘He’s been dead for days, ’pparently. Coppers found him on the street and couldn’t identify him because – and you’ll like this – he’d sold his cards for grog. Liderally sold his idendidy for booze. It’s like a thing, you
know? A thing. That thing when it’s something else.’
When Zoë and I both looked at him blankly, he started to get agitated and repeated, ‘A thing! You know! The thing!’
‘A metaphor?’ I suggested and he nodded heavily.
‘That. So now I’m waiting, y’know? I’ve done the drinking, now I’m waiting for someone to come in and solve all my fuckin’ problems for me just like he used to.’
Everything about Dec was wrong – he sounded, smelt, even looked different and, feeling as if I’d lose him completely if I didn’t grab hold of him, I took my turn trying to pull him off his stool.
‘What’d he do to get two girls?’ I heard someone joke behind me as Zoë took Dec’s other arm and we tried to haul him up.
‘Dunno,’ a gruff voice replied. ‘Flip you for the hot one, though.’
‘Hey!’ Dec turned in the general direction of the voices. ‘Watch your mouths. These girls are my friends. They’re bedder than you or me. They’re worth twelve of us. No, one hundred and twelve of us.’
‘Please, Dec,’ I begged, one of the tears that’d been threatening to fall ever since I’d listened to Vanessa’s message finally sliding down my cheek. ‘Please can we go?’
‘I wan another drink!’ he bellowed, wrenching his arms free of Zoë and me and making us both stumble.
‘O’Connor.’
At the sound of Theo’s steady voice, we all swung around to see that he’d left his position by the door and was now standing before us, a beacon of calm among our emotional tumult.
‘Wha?’ Dec asked belligerently, although I noticed that he was trying to sit up straighter and unobtrusively smooth out his shirt.
‘The girls are upset, I think we should take them home.’
I could see Zoë bridle at being so patronisingly referred to, but I put a hand over hers, silently asking her to keep her peace. I knew what Theo was doing, trying to frame getting us out of there as Dec doing us a favour, putting him in control.
‘Wha do they have to be upset about?’ Dec asked mulishly, his reddened eyes flicking back and forth between us all. ‘I’m the one whose dad’s dead.’
‘Yes,’ Theo said patiently, ‘and they’ve come here to be with you, but now they’re uncomfortable and they need you to go with them.’
‘Please,’ I said again. ‘Please come back to mine, to Aggie’s. I’ll make you a massive batch of madeleines and we can talk – or not, whatever you want. I just want to go.’ I felt another tear drip onto my cheek and, when I reached up to wipe it away, his muzzy gaze followed the movement.
He was clearly wavering and, giving Zoë’s hand a little squeeze, I prompted her into adding, ‘Seriously, Dec, let’s go.’
‘But tha’s breaking the thirty-day thing again,’ he muttered. ‘I’m tryna do the right thing.’
‘Coming back with us is the right thing,’ I assured him.
‘Gio.’ He leant forward as if to tell me a secret, but became unbalanced and toppled against me. ‘I love you, but I don’ wanna have sex with you.’
My face flamed as some of the men around us laughed, a couple letting out piercing whistles, one offering to do the job for him.
‘Noted,’ I said through gritted teeth, trying to lift one of his thin but surprisingly heavy arms over my shoulder. In the next moment, however, I was gently nudged out of the way and Theo heaved Dec to his feet.
‘Get the door, please,’ he grunted, and I scurried over to yank it open, letting a welcome rush of cold air billow in.
I looked back as Theo practically carried Dec out, and saw that Zoë was leant in close to a particularly unpleasant-looking individual I was fairly sure was the one who’d suggested Dec hand me over to him if he wasn’t keen on my company. She was speaking quietly but firmly, and I was fairly sure I read the word ‘arsehole’ on her lips.
‘Leave him, Zo, come on!’ I called and, after one last sneer, she did as I said and stalked past me to the car park.
Theo had settled Dec into the backseat by the time we caught up with them, and I slid in after him, clicking the seatbelt around his prone body.
‘I’ll meet you at yours,’ Zoë said and, when I looked up from trying to make sure Dec was comfortable, I saw that Theo was walking her across the asphalt to her car.
How could I have not wanted him to come? How could I have thought, even for a moment, that he would be more hindrance than help? I didn’t know what we would’ve done if he hadn’t been there. Zoë would probably have started a brawl.
As Theo returned and slipped into the driver’s seat, I looked across at Dec, who seemed to be in some kind of stupor, staring at the floor. I leant forward to touch Theo gently on the arm.
‘Hey,’ I said quietly, and he flicked a glance at me.
‘Yeah?’
‘Thanks and sorry.’
*
Theo didn’t sleep much that night. He couldn’t make himself go into his bedroom, knowing he’d see the rumpled sheets that had so recently had Giovanna’s naked body tumbled through them. When he’d emerged from the shower earlier that evening he’d been surprised to see the bed empty, but assumed she was in the kitchen. When he hadn’t found her there, either, he’d known instantly that something was wrong.
And something had been wrong, was still wrong, so he stretched out on the couch, theorising that he’d be that much closer if Giovanna needed him, could perhaps even hear if she called for him.
But she didn’t.
The protective circle, the friendship that had got Giovanna, O’Connor and Zoë through what he now understood to have been the sort of childhoods that no-one should have to endure, had closed. He’d watched it happen as he’d deposited O’Connor on Giovanna’s bed on their return from The Duchess. Zoë had removed his shoes, Giovanna had fetched a bottle of water and a large bowl in case he was sick – simple things, but performed in a way that showed they were completely in sync, that it was under control now and the only thing they needed was each other.
They’d barely noticed when he’d seen himself out, Giovanna only giving him a tiny wave before she returned her attention to O’Connor.
He’d tried not to hate the way O’Connor’s long limbs had been sprawled across her bed or to overthink how his last sight before he’d closed the door had been of Giovanna taking off O’Connor’s jacket, but it was useless. They were pretty much all he thought about as the hours ticked by, the witching hour coming and going with no light tap upon his door.
He fell asleep some time around dawn and was woken a couple of hours later as his alarm went off. As he dragged himself into the shower, he tried to concentrate on when he could reschedule the Skype call he’d missed and on his meetings for the day, but he felt so heavy and groggy it was as if he’d been the one who’d been knocking back the spirits at The Duchess.
Dressed and feeling a bit more awake with the aid of a brutally strong coffee, he stepped into the corridor and eyed Giovanna’s door uneasily. Obviously it looked the same as always, but he was sure that what had gone on behind it during the night would’ve changed just about everything.
He wasn’t going to knock, he decided. Giovanna was fine, she had it under control.
And yet . . .
He knocked. Not because he thought Giovanna needed him, but because he just wanted to double-check that she didn’t. That was all.
‘Morning, Theo.’
It was Zoë who answered, looking as together as he’d ever seen her, even though she wore the same clothes as the night before. She’d only opened the door the merest crack and, despite her casual expression, he saw that she was angling herself to perfectly block his view into Giovanna’s flat.
‘Zoë,’ he said. ‘That’s a pretty tight grip you’ve got on the door there.’
She considered him for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, the three of us slept in Gio’s bed last night. And now I’m here.’
He thought that through, his heart sinking as he realised what she was telling him. ‘Yo
u don’t want me to see Giovanna in bed with Declan.’
‘Bingo. Although, it’s not as if you have anything to worry about. I can promise you that the only bodily fluids on show last night were vomit and tears, and lots of ’em.’
He nodded, fairly sure he wasn’t finding that information as reassuring as she thought it would be.
‘Right, well I’m just off to work. If you could let Giovanna know, if there’s anything she needs, anything any of you need–’
‘I’ll tell her.’
He hated the sympathy so plain on her face, the sympathy that told him that she, too, knew that they’d closed ranks and Theo was on the out. Still, he was scrupulously polite as he said goodbye and ensured he kept his head up as he walked away down the corridor.
It was just a return to the status quo, he told himself as he went. But not for him. No, for him, it was time for a change. He needed to call Harry Anderson.
17
I woke to the sound of my door clicking shut and cracked my eyes open to see Zoë, already fully dressed and with her customary slash of bright red lipstick firmly in place, turning away from it. I raised my head slightly, a question forming, but she shook her head and pressed a finger to her lips, nodding at Dec where he lay crumpled beside me.
She had a point. It’d been a rough night.
Dec had spent hour upon hour being violently ill, complicated grief and his body’s rejection of the unfamiliar alcohol wracking his tall frame with shakes so strong I’d begun to feel vaguely seasick as I lay beside him. Zoë and I had done what we could: rubbing his back, trying to find clothing big enough for him to change into when he ran with alcohol sweats, and encouraging him to take sips of water in the short breaks between his retching, but he barely seemed to register us in his misery. He rambled about his dad, repeating old stories, reliving each turn of violence; the good, the bad and the ugly blending and blurring in his mind. As each second dragged by, it’d started to feel like the wretched night would never end, as if that was our lives now and there’d never be a time when Zoë and I wouldn’t be scrambling to try to keep Dec afloat from the desolation that was sucking him down.
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