‘Oh, go make up a dance routine, you fucking has-been.’
The first thing that came to hand was the statue. Clare dragged it off the shelf and before Emma could react she had swiped it at her head, catching her across the cheek. It was swung with such force that Emma had to grab hold of the doorway to keep herself upright, and she put a hand to her cheek with an expression of utter astonishment.
Clare burst into tears, dropping the statue on to the sofa.
‘Oh God, oh darling, I’m so sorry—’
‘Go to hell.’ Emma backed away and disappeared from view into the hallway.
Clare followed, pleading through the tears. ‘Please, darling, please, I’m sorry…’
‘I hate you! Go carve the fucking Mona Lisa in your arm for all I fucking care!’
The front door slammed. Clare came back into the living room and sat down, crying, a loud, violent crying with heavy tears and swollen eyes. After a while she remembered the camera was still running, and came across on her knees to turn it off. She paused for a while beforehand, and I realized that she was watching herself again, observing how she looked while crying.
The last thing I saw was her tears in close up.
Even now, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her beauty was so hard-edged; so aggressive that she used it to lash out at others while she lashed inwards at herself.
Mark came in, dropped shopping bags and let out an animated sigh. ‘Jesus, who does Britain think it is, Russia?’
I considered shutting the laptop, hiding any evidence of having been watching the videos, but it was too late; he would hear and become suspicious. I chose to lie instead.
My leg twinged when I turned. ‘Hey!’
‘What you up to?’
‘Just watching some stuff. You know, I’m thinking of picking up this lead I had for Matt…’
‘Still looking for him?’
‘I don’t feel right unless I finish something. It should be finished, right?’
‘No, sure thing.’ Mark stood by the sofa, looking at the laptop, and gestured for it. ‘Let’s have a look?’
Glad that he seemed to be in agreement, I started the same video from the beginning, and we watched it through again. Every so often I glanced at Mark, to judge his expression, but he didn’t look shocked by this one.
‘It’s sad,’ he said as Clare switched the camera off. ‘Here, can I check something?’
‘Yeah, sure.’ I picked up the laptop and passed it back to him, relieved that he hadn’t found anything strange in my behaviour.
‘This all of them?’ he asked, tapping keys.
‘Yeah.’
‘Cool.’ He shrugged and handed it back.
I went to return to the previous video, but the online file I had created was empty. Confused, I refreshed the page, then clicked back, then forwards, to try and find them. But there was nothing.
‘What the fuck, Mark!’
‘What?’ He shrugged.
‘You deleted them?’ I stood up, shouting through the pain it caused. ‘I fucking needed those!’
‘For what, exactly?’
‘For…’ I couldn’t think of a convincing answer, but I carried on shouting anyway, as if it would make a difference. ‘You have no fucking right, no fucking right!’
‘It’s for your own good.’
‘You patronizing fuck!’ I spat.
‘You weren’t going to reform her, Nic!’ He squared up to me, raising his voice. ‘You weren’t going to change her or help her or marry her and have two point five fucking children! She was a screwed-up woman, a beautiful screwed-up woman who knew how to make people as crazy as she was, that’s what you need to get, OK? You weren’t going to be her fucking saviour!’
I punched him but he deflected the blow.
‘Nic, don’t.’
I went for him again and this time he just stood there and took it. Hitting his stomach was like fighting a sheet of iron.
He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and threw me sideways into the wall. I rebounded with some force, caught him around the waist and took us both flying over the back of the sofa. My shoulder smacked against the corner of the coffee table as we hit the floor, and Mark came out on top, pinning me down.
I tried to get up but he wouldn’t let me.
He pointed a finger in my face. ‘I’m not having you sitting there and mythologizing her!’
‘Get off!’
‘I swear, I’ll kick your fucking arse!’
I could have backtracked, but the scale of my overreaction had confirmed his theory. I couldn’t even pinpoint why I was so angry, other than because he had taken away my only way of seeing her again.
All I could hear was our breathing.
Mark was glaring down at me, waiting for a response.
‘Fine,’ I said.
‘Fine, what?’
‘Fine, you’re right.’
After a couple of seconds, he seemed pacified.
‘Apology accepted,’ he said, standing up and pulling me to my feet.
The back of my calf complained, and I had to sit back down again quickly. It struck me, with some regret, that we had never done that before; never even a raised voice, let alone a full-on fight.
Mark brushed himself down and stalked away without a word.
I had watched him work out before, seen the endless push-ups and pull-ups and hours of running that he insisted on doing any day he wasn’t hung-over. He was fucking lethal, but it rarely occurred to me that if he wanted he could snuff me out like a candle.
I looked at the screen and the empty storage file, and called, ‘Look, I’m sorry.’
He came back in with an empty mug in his hand. ‘Do that again, I’ll break something.’
He wasn’t joking.
‘Are you going to see Katz later?’
‘Yeah, drop round some presents for the kids.’ He sat on the arm of the sofa and glanced at the laptop. ‘I just didn’t think it was healthy.’
‘No, you’re right. It’s just… she had this way of getting to you. I mean, how many people love someone so much that they would blow their own brains out instead of carry on living without them? I can’t imagine it.’
‘It’s not something to envy.’
I smirked. ‘You wouldn’t blow your brains out for Roman Katz?’
He spread his hands. ‘I’m kinda against the idea of sacrificing anything for anyone, if they wouldn’t be willing to do the same in return.’
‘Yeah, I get it.’
He ruffled my hair, and then stopped and checked his nails. ‘I know it’s hard, accepting that some people just don’t change.’
I wondered who he was referring to.
‘Is it that fucking wrong though?’ I said. ‘Wanting to find Matt? You want me to let him get away with it, after everything he’s done?’
‘It’s not your fight any more. It’s not going to change anything.’
‘But—’
‘Just let it go, Nic, Jesus!’ He put a hand to the side of my face, elongating the words. ‘Let. It. Go.’
I could see the scar across the curve of his top lip, where someone had swiped at him with a penknife three years ago. He was that close.
My phone vibrated on the sofa next to me, and I was surprised to see that the name on the message ID was Daisy’s.
Mark stood up again and he was laughing.
‘What?’
‘Daisy… Well, fuck me.’ He shook his head as he wandered back into the kitchen. ‘Got to admit, I thought you’d made that one up.’
She was wearing a tweed poncho and nothing else. After a brutal fuck against the wall, on the stairs and on the sofa, Daisy put on some music and we lay on the floor smoking weed.
‘If you’d told me you were gonna do that I’d have warmed up. You know, done some aerobic stretches, fucking Pilates…’ She wrapped herself tighter in the tweed and rubbed her smudged lipstick. ‘Nothing broken, it’s all good.’
‘What can I say
? I’m glad you got in touch…’
‘Well, I was curious. Did you off them then? Matt and Kyle?’
She sounded disturbingly matter-of-fact.
‘Matt? No, he wasn’t at that address. He went up north apparently. Does he have family up north, do you know?’
‘Sorry, you’re confusing me with someone constructing his family tree.’ She ran a finger down the bridge of my nose. ‘What are you, Italian or French or something?’
‘Scottish-Italian.’
‘Sweet. Least you could do is cook me dinner and all.’ She dug an elbow into me and turned on to her side. ‘Is Nic your real name?’
‘Yes.’
Her expression seemed to alternate between sardonic boredom and a persistent excitement. It didn’t seem to bother her that she had run out of the hard-core drugs. If it had been Harriet she would have been rifling through the bathroom cupboards looking for a shower cleaner she could convert into a solvent.
‘Yeah, but I bet you’re a filthy liar.’
‘It is. It’s Nic Caruana; I can get people to vouch for it and everything.’
‘Same people who can vouch for not knowing you, eh?’ She blew smoke at me and shrugged. ‘I don’t give a flying one, really. Nic, Brian, whatever, I’ll call you fucking Vanessa, if you like? … What are you up to post-Christmas then?’
‘I’ve got a funeral actually.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘My brother’s.’
‘Fuck, sorry, man. I just talk and talk and bleurgh and you’ve actually got proper shit going on? How did he die?’
‘Shot down in Afghanistan. He was a helicopter pilot.’
She whistled, writing words in the air with the smoke trail from her spliff. ‘Wow. Hero.’
I hesitated, and she laughed.
‘Ooh, favourite child, right? Tough shit, everyone has them. Seriously though, sorry, it must be… difficult, painful, I don’t know. You’re probably sick of people saying the same old same old…’ She rested her head on my arm and fell silent for a bit.
I blinked, hard, starting to feel light-headed from the drugs. It felt good, these brief holidays from serious thought. It crossed my mind that Mark would like her.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked. ‘You know, the rent’s going to run out soon.’
‘Then I’ll be packing, won’t I? I’m sick of this place anyway, and it feels weird with Meds dying upstairs and… I mostly sleep down here now anyway. I believe in ghosts, right, but I would freak the fuck out if I had to see him drifting about with his endless fucking insulin shots. He’d be the worst haunting ever.’ She paused. ‘I miss that lad a bit. I miss Ems something rotten… What a waste, man, what a waste.’
I had considered telling her about Pat and Clare, but decided there was little point. I kept thinking, ‘Let it go. Let. It. Go.’ It was a waste. She had no idea how much of a waste it had been.
I pulled her closer against me.
She let out a snort of amusement, but went along with it.
‘How are you spending the holidays?’ I said, on the verge of dropping off.
‘Dunno, the usual?’ She gestured a lot when she spoke, up into the air. ‘I’ll probably get pissed on WKD, watch Love Actually and cry.’
‘Sounds fine to me.’
‘Oh, and do a bit of a dancing in front of the mirror with a hairbrush.’
‘Funny, I was going to do exactly the same thing.’
She punched me on the arm, laughing. ‘Ha, you big gay.’
37
We arrived too late for introductions, but it gave me the excuse I needed to sit at the back unnoticed. There were flags everywhere, rows and rows of people wearing uniforms with medals pinned to their chests.
I saw Mark scanning the congregation for Harriet and my parents as we sat down; he had a David Attenboroughesque fascination with where I had come from, much like me with his background.
‘He doesn’t look much like you,’ Mark whispered.
I followed his gaze to the picture of Tony, many rows in front, and was shocked by the recollection of his features. His face had become a blur to me in recent months. I tried to feel something, but couldn’t. I even tried to recall specific memories, from the times when I was young and still fond of him, but they didn’t work.
‘Yeah, he looks like Mum,’ I said. ‘Got the blond hair. The fucking pretty boy, Harri used to call him.’
I tried to catch a glimpse of Harriet but gave up. My suit was irritating me.
An imposing man in military uniform cleared his throat to say something, and started reading a poem.
‘“You risked your life for others, each and every day…”’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ I muttered.
‘What?’
‘I just knew this was going to be shit.’
I got the impression that Mark hadn’t believed me when I’d told him in the car why I hadn’t wanted to come. He thought my reluctance was some kind of symptom of grief and not genuine resentment.
Harriet and I would never be afforded this level of air-brushing.
Mark looked perplexed.
‘Talk about mythologizing,’ I said, by way of explanation.
I could hear Mum crying already. It was an unfamiliar and distressing sound, dragged out of my memory. The last time I had heard Mum cry was when one of my uncles had died, her younger brother who lived in Inverness. I’d been young, ten or eleven, and only heard it through her bedroom wall. At that age I didn’t even believe parents were capable of swearing, let along crying.
‘“And we loved and respected your courage, more than you understood…”’
I could smell flowers and taste copper.
The man’s voice reverberated against stone.
I felt like ripping one of the fake plastic wreaths out of someone’s hands and strangling him with it.
I remembered the day it had happened and I had come home, shaking so much I was unable to even use my key. Tony had looked up and down the street, hand around the sleeve of my coat lest I make a run for it. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ…’ he had said, before dragging me inside.
I remembered being yanked up the stairs and into the bathroom, hauled into the bath and hosed down, being told over and over again, ‘You don’t tell Mum and Dad about this, you hear me? How could you have been so damn stupid! You don’t tell anyone! You don’t tell anyone!’
I remembered that he had washed the blood off, thrown the clothes away and forced me to recite an alibi. I had cried until my head hurt, and did as he ordered. But when Dad got home from work I still told him everything.
Tony stopped speaking to me, and didn’t start again for over three years, when I was out of incarceration. He didn’t even visit, so total was his sense of betrayal. The way he had seen it, he had tried to help me and I had thrown it back in his face.
‘“Your efforts will impact generations…”’
As far as my parents were concerned, any attempted cover-up had been mine, and they would never know any different. If I had known from a younger age that your job as a human being was just to lie like everyone else, then maybe my funeral would have stood a better chance of looking like this.
‘“Through lives saved and all the good you did.”’
There was a commotion at the front, muffled voices…
Mark sat up straighter to catch a glimpse of any drama.
Harriet was walking back up the aisle with a hand covering her eyes, ignoring the startled eyes following her. She was wearing a black dress and high heels that she didn’t look used to walking in.
On her way out of the door she kicked over one of the stands holding the hymn books.
I hovered, half on and half off my seat, before following her at a jog.
Harriet had stormed off across the graveyard, pausing only to take her high heels off and throw one of them at a headstone. She lit a cigarette and sat down on a tomb with her back to me.
Shivering, I zipped my coat up over my suit and called out, ‘Hey, I
want my money back!’
She turned, and rolled her eyes.
‘I was expecting pyrotechnics, to be honest,’ I said, sitting on the tomb beside her. ‘Gi’s a cigarette?’
She handed me one and lit it for me.
I was surprised to see tears in her eyes.
‘You OK?’
‘Fuck, no…’ She sniffed. ‘I fucking hate him, Nic. I can’t help it. Listening to all that just makes me feel literally sick. I couldn’t stay.’
Of course she wasn’t crying over Tony. Fury was the only thing that could get tears out of her, even as a child. It was as close to human feeling as she got.
‘I like to think he’d rather we just went out and got hammered anyway.’ I glanced down at the name of the man we were sitting on. ‘Is this technically disrespecting the dead? Mr… Lionel Charles Carthew.’
Mark climbed on to the tomb next to me, lighting his own cigarette with an amused expression. ‘Na, I think he likes the company.’
‘Harri, this is Mark. Mark, this is Harri, my sister.’
Harriet craned her neck around me and stuck out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you, finally. Sorry about this vomit-fest.’
‘Na, I love a good funeral.’ Mark took a drag and gave my shoulder a squeeze. ‘And by funeral I might mean free buffet.’
‘Free bar too, it’s a bloody rave.’ Harriet winked at me. ‘He’s cool.’
‘So you’re not saying anything?’ I asked.
‘No, the army lads have got it. Plus, I couldn’t possibly finish a eulogy. I’d keep gagging on the smell of burning martyr.’ She kicked her heels against the stone and I saw the beginning of a ladder by her big toe. ‘Hey, how are things going with that married woman?’
I exchanged glances with Mark.
‘Didn’t really come to anything, Harri.’
‘Sucks… It’s true though, they never leave their wives, or husbands, whatever. You’re better off well shot of anyone married, trust me.’
It was strange, thinking about Clare here. She belonged so solidly in fantasy that I couldn’t superimpose her image on to anything real, like my family, or other locations. In a way, it made sense that in dying she had got what she wanted; she got to carry on as fantasy, without age, without failure…
Something You Are Page 28
