‘And you?’ he asked, his face so close I could feel his breath.
I extracted a hand and fished in my jeans pocket for the twenty with the code on it. I lay it on the table and smoothed it flat with my fingers.
Smith picked it up, and for the first time his gaze left my face.
‘St Ann’s 143 cabbages?’
‘You’ll work it out.’
But when they got there they wouldn’t find a bike stuffed full of drugs. Instead there would be just the lock wrapped around the post. When they entered the combination it would release the key for a locker at the railway station. By then we should be well away.
‘I’d best be going,’ I said.
Smith looked back at me.
‘Who’d have thought you’d turn out to be so beautiful?’ he said.
I smiled, and because I could, and because I’d never see him again, I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips.
‘Bye Smith. Say hi to Jeannie for me. Bye Dave.’
I slung the Adidas bag over my shoulder and left the bar.
That was when I got nervous and wished I’d had more coke. The club wasn’t in the worst part of town, but you had to walk up an alleyway to get to it. We’d wondered, when making our plan, whether to meet Smith somewhere else, somewhere neutral and on a main street. But we’d decided it showed more faith to go to his home turf.
I was halfway up the alley when Jeannie shot out of a doorway and punched me in the face. I fell backwards against a lamppost and she made a grab for the bag. I clung on and she started kicking me. We pulled the bag between us. I could see the anger in her face and after a few moments she gave up on the bag and just laid into me. She was wearing rings and I felt a spurt of blood as one of them cut me under my eye.
She was screaming at me, ‘Bitch. You fucking bitch!’
I was vaguely aware that Smith and Dave were in the alley watching.
I curled myself into a ball around the bag and covered my face with my hands.
‘Fight me,’ Jeannie yelled. She grabbed at my hair and pulled, trying to get my head up. It hurt like hell. She was kicking me all the time with her sharp boots. I wondered if Smith would join in.
Then suddenly she stopped and there was a strange noise, a bit like a cricket ball hitting a bat. Jeannie was flying through the air. She landed on Dave, knocking him over. Smith looked perturbed for the first time that night.
Richard was standing next to me.
‘Good punch,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘Are you ok?’
I stood up, which wasn’t that easy. I could feel blood on my face from the cut, and my thighs and hips felt bruised and sore from Jeannie’s boots. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘Let’s go then.’
I held on to the bag and we started walking away up the alley.
We’d gone about twenty feet when there were running footsteps behind us. Richard swung round and hit out, and Smith went flying back down the alley, landing in a doorway near the other two.
‘Fuck!’ he said loudly.
Jeannie was holding her arm and I wondered if she’d broken it. Dave looked from her to Smith who was rubbing his head. He looked scared, but he obviously decided that as the last man standing he’d have to come after us. He ran down the alley with a determined look on his face.
As he got close Richard seemed to grow a foot taller. He stood up on his toes and took his shades off and bared his teeth. His eyes were milky and veined with red. It wasn’t much, but it was effective. Dave stopped in his tracks and screamed, then turned and ran back the other way.
Richard offered me his arm. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
Back at the hotel Richard bathed my face and we popped some of the pills we’d siphoned off. My thighs and hips were starting to stiffen. I ran another bath and soaked in the hot water surrounded by mountains of bubbles while the drugs began to work their magic.
At some point Richard came into the bathroom. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and his feet were bare. He sat on the side of the bath.
‘You’re overdressed,’ I said.
He held his hand out to me and I got out. He held a big towel and wrapped it around me, and then we kissed.
‘Do you want to go out?’ he asked. ‘Go to a club or something.’
The room was shining like the inside of an alien spaceship. Up close I could see the stubble just breaking through his skin, tiny black bristles. There was a trace of saliva on his bottom lip. His hands were on my back pressing against the thickness of the towel.
‘No. I think I’d like to stay in.’
He smiled and the spaceship went into overdrive. ‘Me too,’ he said.
46. Cassie
Andy was a fixer. A problem solver. He thought if something was broken he should mend it, get it working again. He’d spend time trying even if it was beyond repair.
I only stayed overnight once after I came back. It seemed to be going well. While I was with him I stayed focused, mostly. I remembered to laugh at his jokes. Long ago we used to share a bottle of wine in the kitchen and bitch about the other teachers in the staffroom. We were two amongst the many: us against the world. We used to go for long bike rides together, and sometimes I made jokes of my own. That seemed a long time ago.
I was getting up to find my coat when Andy grabbed my hand.
‘You can stay if you want.’
I’d worked hard at invisibility in the intervening years. I wore cheap clothes in grey and beige. I scraped my hair off my face, highlighted nothing. Now back in my old life I had the wardrobe of a woman who wanted to be attractive. A lot of my make up was still usable and I’d started to play, to see if that woman still existed.
Andy used to fancy me.
I sat down again and he kissed me.
The first time we kissed was at a Year Eight disco. We were both on duty and we were sent to get back-up refreshments from the store cupboard. Standing amongst stacks of cola and catering sized tins of baked beans, it felt forbidden and exciting. When all the kids had gone home I took him back to my place and we went straight to the bedroom. Kissing Andy was familiar. My lips knew that story.
Upstairs we sat on the bed and looked at each other. Neither of us removed any clothes.
We sat for a long time.
‘We can be friends,’ I said eventually.
‘But…’
‘I’ve been offered a teaching job in Manchester. I’m probably going to take it.’
‘But you’ve only just come back.’
‘I won’t stay away, not this time. And anyway, I’d be in your way here. You can’t start something new with your ex hanging around.’
‘What…?’
The front door opened and closed and we heard footsteps on the stairs.
‘Lauren,’ he said.
‘I’ll go home.’
‘No, stay. We don’t have to…’
‘What would be the point?’
‘We used to be a family.’
‘Families change,’ I said. But I stayed. We held each other on the bed, and slept fully clothed. At some point Andy pulled a blanket over us. In the morning you were in the kitchen and you hated me. I was happy to see that. Hate is a strong emotion akin to love. They can change easily from one to the other. But you can’t make them out of nothing.
47. Lauren
When I woke there was a woman sitting on the edge of the bed. She smiled and stroked my face and I went back to sleep. When I woke again I was alone.
I sat up and looked around me. It wasn’t my room. I didn’t recognise this room. I remembered the woman and realised she was Meg. This was Meg’s house and she had kissed me.
I swung my legs out of the bed and tried to stand, but I filled with sharp knives in every part of my body, and I cried out.
I
called ‘Richard!’ very loudly.
I didn’t want Richard, I wanted Peter. I wanted Peter to come and take me away from this place.
She came into the room and she was carrying Richard’s big black coat.
‘Put this on,’ she said. ‘It will make you feel better.’
I wasn’t cold, but I did what she said, and she was right. The pain went away. Well, almost. I could still feel it tingling in my veins, trying to jab at me. But I could stand up and walk over to the window and look out at the daylight. The room must have been in the attic because I could see the roof sloping away from the window. I could see the tops of trees.
‘What day is it?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘All days are much the same.’
She stood behind me and touched my neck. She lifted my hair and twisted it into a rope and ran her fingers down from my ear to my shoulder. I could feel the line they left behind.
‘I know what you are,’ I said to her.
She kissed my neck on the spot I’d been keeping covered and placed her hands on my hips.
‘Richard has gone away,’ she said. ‘There’s only us.’
‘I don’t want to be one of you. I want to be with Peter.’
She turned me around and kissed me on the lips. ‘I don’t think you know what you want, Lauren,’ she said.
When she left the room I heard the key turn in the lock. So that was it then. I was a prisoner. I looked out again. I could get out onto the roof, but there was no way down and the tiles looked slippery. If I fell, the best I could hope for would be broken bones.
I took off the coat and the knives started up again, turning and twisting in my veins. I hugged the sheet about me. I’d left the window open and the December air was slicing in, slashing at my bare skin. I listed plants in my head. Mullein, valerian, lungwort, black comfrey, coltsfoot. Coltsfoot. I saw the hoof of a young horse transmute gradually to a goat’s, to Peter’s, and I convulsed, close to vomiting. The pain was getting worse and I knew I’d have to put the coat back on.
I drew my thoughts back to flowers, to leaves, berries, stalks and seeds. I felt in the pocket of my jeans and smiled. The plants had always helped me.
Ivy, elder, rowan, hawthorn, yew.
I slid off the bed. I could barely stand up straight. Near the window I fell, but I put my hand on the sill and pulled myself up, levered with my elbows until I was kneeling and looking out across the tree-filled valley. The clouds had come untucked and were hanging down, touching the tops of the hills.
I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled three sharp blasts. Each one was like a punch in the guts and I nearly doubled over. After the third I felt sleep washing over me and pulling me down. I managed to close the window before I curled on the floor like a worm and let it take me into oblivion again.
Ramsons, horse chestnut, hedge mustard, lemon verbena, vervain.
When I woke I was on the bed with the coat laid over me like a blanket. The clouds had sunk lower and the house was wrapped in fog. I could see the white mist against the windows. Beyond there was nothing.
I shrugged myself into the coat and went back to the window which drew me. I opened it and the fog swirled in, touching my skin with damp skeins. I leaned on the sill and put my head through the opening, looking and looking. But the white was opaque and there was nothing to see.
I always loved it when the valley filled up like this.
It seemed like there was nowhere to go, that the clouds were fixing me in place, yet it wasn’t true. I could move through it, slowly, unsure. If I went uphill, I might come out of the top and look down on the surface of the cloud, joining the sides of the valley like a damp soft flood.
I closed my eyes and Peter came to me.
He was with his father. They held out their hands and I took them and stepped out onto the roof. Their hooves were sure-footed on the tiles and when we reached the edge they leaped in a graceful arc, descending through the air, their feet landing softly on the grass. The fog billowed through my shirt and I was weightless.
They ran, and between them I ran too, faster than I ever had in my life. I no longer had the coat. That lay on the floor of the attic room. We moved through the white fog. I could see the ground under my feet, a circle of inches, but nothing beyond that. First we travelled along the rough potholed road which led to Hough Dean. Then the ground changed and we were racing over grass and heather, bounding up over boulders, gaining height all the time. I tried to work out our route, but the fog confused me.
Eventually we reached a plateau and they stopped running. Peter’s dad let go of my hand and walked away into the fog. Peter and I were alone in the cloud. We held hands and stood close so our shoulders touched.
‘Thank you,’ I said to Peter.
‘I brought these like you asked,’ he said, handing me some pieces of root.
I frowned.
‘Are you ok?’ he said.
He shoved the root into my shirt pocket and I leaned against him.
We sat on a stone and wrapped our arms around each other, waiting for the fog to clear.
Plants all have their own characters and I don’t understand how people can get them mixed up. Like basil and mint. Quite apart from the smell, they look completely different from each other. Basil is suave and smooth and sharply witty, whilst mint has a toughness about it, a gritty, beardy, grizzled freshness that takes no prisoners. And some of them have a sense of humour. Jack-in-the-hedge always makes me laugh; wood sorrel is shy and peeps at you when you’ve passed by and bindweed is so damn cheeky. All of them are stronger than they look.
Monkshood, aconitum napellus, also known as Tiger’s Bane, Wolfsbane, the Queen of Poisons, is a perennial and dies back to the ground in winter. All parts of the plant are deadly poisonous, and it has been used by hunters and murderers and healers throughout time. A poison arrow tipped with aconite will instantly paralyse your prey. Taken internally it is a sedative, reducing fever, slowing circulation, dramatically reducing pulse and blood pressure. Too much and the heart goes into arrest. The tipping point is hard to find, a secret only known to the few. Its flowers are pretty, blue and bell-shaped. In the summer they nod wisely beneath the hawthorn in my garden. I feel that they have much they could tell me if they chose. At this time of year they are only root.
When I woke I was on the bed with the coat laid over me like a blanket. Outside night had fallen. I put the coat on and went over to the window. It was a clear night and the sky was full of stars.
I heard the key turn in the door and behind me Meg came into the room. I could smell her. She smelled of iron and salt and hunger.
‘I don’t want to become one of you,’ I said.
‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘You need us now.’
‘Not you. I don’t need you.’
‘That will change with the third bite,’ she said. ‘That will bind you to me.’
‘I won’t let you bite me,’ I said.
‘Yes you will. When the time comes you will beg me to bite you.’
She didn’t come near me. She had a tray of food which she put on the floor beside the bed, and then she left.
I looked at the food. Beef broth, liver, crispy bacon, slices of pork, raw eggs in a glass. I didn’t want to eat her food. I ran my finger across the surface of the liver and licked it. Then I picked up and took a bite. I chewed it and swallowed and it became a part of my body. I wanted more. I wanted to eat it all.
I emptied my pockets out onto the tray, scattering the meat with seed and stalk and root.
Belladonna, papaver, datura, digitalis, mandragora, henbane, convallaria.
Monkshood.
I went back to the window. Where was Peter? Did he think I didn’t love him?
When I woke it was morning and the tray by my bed was empty. I didn’t remember eating any of the food, but I felt com
fortable. The knives had stopped. I was heavy and couldn’t move, but it was pleasant. I lay on the sheets and felt the weight of my limbs pinning me down. My skin felt like satin and I could feel the spaces between my toes and my fingers. My breath sounded like a distant sea.
Outside the sky got lighter. Clouds had come in during the night and they hung grey and still. There was no breeze. The trees were silent as winter. Nothing worried me. I put my fingers into the pocket of my shirt, but there was nothing there.
After a long time Meg came in. She looked at the empty tray and she looked at me lying on the bed and she smiled.
‘I ate everything,’ I whispered.
I turned my head away from her. It was all the movement I could manage.
She knelt beside me and touched the smooth skin of my neck.
‘It’s time,’ she said.
She leaned forward, then stopped. I heard her swear but I couldn’t respond. My blood had stopped moving and it was no good to her. I was immobile. The last sound I heard was her indrawn hiss.
48. Peter
That night there was cloud and then there were stars. Peter ran underneath them. His legs moved and his hooves bounced on the springy turf. Bounding over boulders and stone walls, he became the movement. The night breathed into him and filled him until the stars were his eyes, his skin and hair as inconsequential as the dead grass heads that moved in the breeze beside the path. He grew to fill the night and his body was nothing except movement and the passage of air.
North of Settle he headed for Ingleborough, springing up the hillside, desperate for the touch of the sky on his face, the glimpse of the moon reflected in the sea at Morecambe Bay. He reached the top, panting and sweaty, and ran on past the trig point and the shelter to the edge of the plateau.
There were so many stars, so bright, each one stamped into the darkness. In front of him the land unfolded in dark layers like a tumbled duvet; beyond, the smooth glimmer of the distant sea.
He stood still. Nothing changed, except that the sweat dried on his skin. Cold crept into his coat, making the hairs stand on end to trap the warmth from his run. The moon moved across the sky, and clouds gathered to the south with a whisper of warmer air. He curled in the lee of the shelter and fell asleep.
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