by Matthew Crow
Once I had got inside and said a cursory hello to Dad, I crawled into bed fully clothed and felt a tear run down my face. Just as sleep began to slowly take me, my phone buzzed against my thigh and I retrieved it with a leaden arm.
The text was from Ross.
Please don’t go near Dan again. I’m scared for you.
I went to hit reply but hit delete instead, before I slipped into twelve hours of sweet, blessed, oblivion.
11
A Poem on the Underground Wall
Mr Fitzpatrick accepted my company grudgingly at first. We’d sit in almost silence. I’d ask him questions and he’d shirk the answers. He’d try to get me to describe myself and my condition in words that I wasn’t sure I had, and I’d change the subject, keen to be more to him than just the girl who went mad.
Our only smooth conversational rallies came when we chatted about innocuous subjects. The state of the town, on a whole. The graffiti on the harbour walls. The weather. The press intrusion. Television. The summer that we had been promised but which so far hadn’t materialised.
Before long though, I think he came to not only expect but also to enjoy my visits, as much as anyone ever did. Small details were telling. Perhaps they were a coincidence. Perhaps they wouldn’t have meant anything to anybody else. But to me they showed affection and an appreciation of my time and company, and I grew to like him for it.
Saturday was his established day for cleaning, he had told me proudly one day, but after my first couple of visits the house suddenly became immaculate. On the days I’d pop in, the place would smell like a meadow, heady with room-spray and polish. The cushions would be plumped, the surfaces swept. His myriad photographs and albums would be piled and filed as neatly as could be for such an abundant collection in such a modest front room.
There would be treats, too. Unopened packets of luxury biscuits sometimes, which we’d gorge on together and that he would insist I took home on the rare occasion there were leftovers. A fresh cream-cake here and there from the bakers behind the bank. Once an entire meal: lasagne made from scratch, with salad and garlic bread – and a small glass of wine to boot.
‘You know how to treat a lady,’ I said as he cleared the plates.
‘I extend to you the courtesy I’d show any guest,’ he said sternly, with all of his usual warmth and humour.
For a long time his past was deemed a no-go area.
‘Mine was a small and inconsequential life, Claudette,’ he’d say with a smile, when I’d go the long way round a conversation to try and wean some minor detail from him. ‘I’m not worth discussing.’
‘Everybody’s worth discussing,’ I’d argue. ‘Everybody has a story inside of them.’
‘Some stories are best left untold,’ he said.
That’s not to say he applied the same indifference when it came to me. More and more he’d urge me to reveal more. He didn’t just want to know about the hospital, or about the more colourful details of my illness, which were what most people seemed fascinated by. He wanted to know about where I was in it all. He talked to me and about me in a way nobody ever did. He separated me from the madness – as if it were a separate entity, a spare limb. He was keen to find out how I coped with it all. In essence, he wanted to understand just how much ‘me’ existed within ‘it’.
Perhaps most importantly, it felt like he really listened.
‘And were you aware at the time?’ he’d ask me after I’d finished telling him one detail or another. ‘I mean, did you recognise your father? Did you know he still cared?’
His interest always came back to that. Dad and I. What he did, how he did it, whether I appreciated his efforts even at my worst.
‘At your worst, how aware were you of your behaviour?’ he said delicately, encouragingly, though firmly enough that I knew he wouldn’t be fobbed off. I groaned.
‘When things get bad I feel like – I don’t know, I feel like I’m searching for myself in a crowd,’ I tried and he nodded.
‘That must be terrifying.’
‘It is,’ I said.
‘And is there any respite? Does anything help? Or is it a case of hoping the storm will pass?’
‘Some things do help I suppose,’ I said.
‘Friends?’
I shrugged.
‘Family?’
Again I shrugged.
‘Dad, I suppose,’ I said, taking another biscuit. ‘He’s the one thing I can see in the dark. It’s like my mind remembered to tag him with some neon collar so I can always spot him even when the rest of the world is like… phwooooah.’ I illustrated this by rocking my head from side to side so that the room blurred and my hair coiled to my face.
Mr Fitzpatrick laughed, whether at the performance or the sentiment I’m not sure, but whatever answer I had given him seemed to soothe him.
‘When I used to do gymnastics we were told to focus on one point in the room whenever we did spins or pirouettes. This way we wouldn’t trip and fall once the dizziness set in. I could spin on the spot for minutes at a time, just by learning how to focus on the tiniest sliver of a wall, how to move my head so fast it was as if my eyes never broke that focus. That’s Dad, to me. When things get bad he’s my focal point. Anyway, quid pro quo Mr F. Now you have to tell me something about yourself.’
He smiled took a biscuit.
He ignored my question. ‘The missing girl. Sarah. Were you aware of her troubles?’
‘Everyone was,’ I said, cross that he had managed to unearth the one subject I found more fascinating than him. ‘The worst part was she was smart enough to know exactly how bad things were for her. It pisses me off the way people talk about her, as if she was gone long before she went missing. She wasn’t. She was right here. We all knew her and we all saw her, every day and every night, and we turned away. Everybody saw but nobody looked and certainly nobody spoke out. And if we’d given her a fraction of the thought then as we are now then maybe she’d be home, and safe.’
I sat and seethed at the injustice of Sarah’s life.
‘Most people would rather clean up a huge mess than tidy up as they go along,’ said Mr Fitzpatrick eventually. ‘I don’t think for a moment they even realise how messy things are until they can’t find something specific. It’s a crying shame, really. We have to become emergencies before we are tended to properly.’
I didn’t know that Sarah would go missing, but I could tell that bad things were coming.
It was no secret that she took what she could from those she felt wouldn’t miss it. And, on more than one occasion, those she felt deserved to be without. The incident in the changing room was hardly a revelation in that sense. That she did it never made me think less of her. To some Sarah was bad all the way through. Not me. To me she was strong, not hard. She was neither a master thief nor an opportunistic entrepreneur of the underworld. She didn’t take to get more; she took to get by.
Her survival instincts were impressive, but then again so were her morals, as skewed as they were. Sarah only seemed to take from the very worst our school had to offer. And so she would skip past Melanie Coolidge’s bag (bullied for her overbite, big brother recently jailed) and the scant offerings of Sharon Fielding’s third-generation parka (both parents dead, grandparents hanging in there by a thread), and dipped straight for the knock-off designer number of Tanya Binks (blonde, suspended three times for bullying) and Ashleigh Davis (mum ran the local Cash Converters, dad ran the local BNP group). Money, phones, cigarettes – anything that could get her as far away from where she had gotten seemed to be her main objective.
So when she started taking from me, I wasn’t filled with a sense of rage and injustice. I was pissed, for sure, as much as anybody on a limited budget would be to discover they’d been relieved of a crisp note with nothing to show for it. But more than anything I was concerned. To me, this new behaviour meant that Sarah was no longer just trying to get by, the way she had been before. Now, she was trying to get away from something, trying to e
scape. Now, she was desperate.
On one of our final nights together, as Sarah grew more withdrawn and I began to bleed irrevocably beyond all clearly defined lines, we walked back from the beach in the dark.
‘I thought you’d be happier, given your lot in life,’ she said, after a while.
‘Why’s that?’ We plodded through the loose sand towards the concrete underpass which separated the dog-walking stretch of the beach from the car park.
‘You’ve got everything. You’ve got a dad. You’ve got that old lass who knocks about down the social centre.’
‘Paula?’ I corrected her and she shrugged.
‘You’ve got friends.’
‘Not as many as you,’ I objected and Sarah scoffed.
‘I don’t have friends. I’ve got a group of lads that want to fuck me and a group of girls that are too scared to disagree with anything I ever say.’
‘You do rule with an iron fist.’
‘Bitches get stuff done,’ she shot back, and we both laughed. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re mad…’ she went on, thinking out loud. ‘… Like, I haven’t got time to think whether or not I’m happy or sad. I’m never in one place long enough to feel anything, really. Always doing something. Always going somewhere. With you it’s like you’ve got all this stuff, this family and this house —’
‘It’s a flat,’ I tried and she gave me a look of disgust. Sarah never seemed to contemplate others all that much, so on the one hand I felt almost touched that she had clearly spent so long considering my predicament. On the other hand, I quite wanted to kick her teeth back into her skull for the conclusions she was making.
‘There’s no fire under your arse, is what I’m saying. You’ve got all this time so you sit around feeling bad because you can.’
‘What a luxury,’ I said, half hurt and half angry.
‘I’m not saying it to be tight,’ she said sharply, and suddenly I felt the same pang of fear which her devoted fan base at school must have lived with on a daily basis. ‘It’s not a bad thing. I wish I could be like that. I wish I had time to decide how I felt. I wish I could let myself feel without…’ Her breath trailed off into the night air as we made our way through the concrete underpass.
‘It is a bad thing,’ I said quietly as Sarah turned her phone light on to illuminate her pathway, clutching it in the same fist as she held a stubby bottle of half-drunk vodka.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was just trying to make you feel a bit better. It looks well shit being you sometimes,’ she said, bumping her weight against me.
The walls of the underpass were daubed with misspelled and misguided teenage hymns – love, lust and hate all scribbled in thick marker and cheap spray paint. Sarah lit the walls with the sharp light of her phone. We walked slowly, contemplating these outbursts and pleas. In a different life we’d have been two happy schoolgirls on a trip to an art gallery.
Suk Ur Dick NE Time NE Place, said one message in black ink on top of which a phone number had been written, scribbled out and rewritten in a different thickness of pen.
Jack and Lydia 4EVA, another message read.
I once was here, here I was, was I here, yes I was…, some poet had daubed in sharp bubble lettering, clearly proud of their flair with words.
There were spray-painted names and tags in fonts so elaborate they may as well have been in a different language, as well as crude outlines of body parts and the odd gun thrown in for good measure.
‘Here we go,’ she said as we reached the end of the tunnel. ‘I’ve arrived,’ she said sarcastically, and held the light up to reveal one patch of wall in particular.
Sarah Banks Is A Junky Hore With ADES.
We both stood and giggled for a moment.
‘There’s none about me,’ I moaned.
‘Give it time,’ she said, stepping closer to the wall. We were so close to the leaching amber lighting of the car park entrance that she was able to turn off her phone. Beneath the colourful description of Sarah’s character and wellbeing was a darker message, sprayed in pink.
Sarah Banks Is A Dead Girl.
Sarah stood in front of the message and giggled to herself, unscrewing the lid of her vodka bottle and taking a mouthful which she spat half of into her right palm.
‘There you go,’ she said, pressing the wet outline of her palm beneath the message. ‘Not many girls my age can say they’ve got their own star on the walk of fame.’
‘Do you want to thank the Academy?’ I asked. ‘Your family? Your God?’
Sarah resealed the lid on her bottle and thought for a moment.
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Anywhere I go I go alone.’
I asked Sarah to hold my bag while I relieved myself behind the locked toilets in the car park.
‘Don’t be long, it’s freezing and I want to be getting home,’ she said, taking my tote bag as I minced behind the concrete shed.
The sound of me pissing was louder than I’d have liked but absolutely unavoidable. A brazen jet cut through the silence of the night like a sandblaster as I watched my piss worm its way downhill towards the sand.
When I got back Sarah was swallowing the last drop of her vodka. She threw the empty bottle behind her. It shattered invisibly.
‘Here,’ she said, suddenly in a hurry. ‘I’ve got to get going.’
‘Me too,’ I said, as she began making her way across the grass verges at double speed.
‘Sarah,’ I called after her, in that night-time whisper that’s as loud as a scream. She slowed down grudgingly before stopping completely. ‘You have got one friend you know.’
‘Yeah?’ she asked, without turning to face me.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Me.’
She winced as I said it, before carrying on her walk.
‘Believe me you’re better off out of it,’ she yelled as she vanished into the night. ‘I’m not worth the effort.’
It would be days and days before I saw her again.
The next day I arrived at school late, having slept in.
Sarah hadn’t turned up at all.
‘You look like shit,’ Donna said in the lunch queue, as we waited with our congealing trays of chips and beans.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, as Donna helped herself to a chocolate tray bake and a bag of salt and vinegar. ‘I just don’t really sleep.’
‘All you ever do is sleep. You’re like Lazarus without the resurrection, which I would know about because I finished my RE coursework. Did you?’ she asked, but my mouth wouldn’t work to answer her. ‘Maybe you should ask your dad for a day off school? Get some rest? You literally look like you’ve died,’ she said, sounding almost concerned.
The room felt like it was filling with water and even putting one foot in front of the other was proving a trying task. Yet through the thickening of my mood I found myself craning my neck around the dining room, trying to see if Sarah had at least shown up to school for her free meal.
‘When you’re ready, big lass,’ said the dinner lady at the till.
‘Oh,’ I said, trying to cling to an appropriate response. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, rifling through my bag for my purse.
‘Loony toons,’ said a Year Nine boy, throwing a chip my way and hitting me near my ear. It bounced off onto the cash register.
The dinner lady tutted, as Donna became impatient and put her tray of food down, taking my bag from my limp hands.
‘I’d love to know where you go sometimes,’ she said, locating my empty purse and opening it up.
‘Me too,’ I said quietly, as Donna rolled her eyes at my melodrama.
‘Clearly not to the fucking bank,’ she said as the dinner lady scowled.
‘I could have you suspended for that,’ she said coldly to Donna as the line behind us grew more and more impatient.
‘Sorry,’ I said, assuming from past experience that the ire was directed at me.
‘Claudette, there’s literally not a penny in here,’ she said, tipping the purse upside down to pro
ve the point.
‘Today!’ yelled Scott Brennan from the back of the line and Donna gave him a high-salute middle finger for his input.
‘There’s a twenty in the notes bit. Dad gave it to me this weekend for lunches.’
‘Think again,’ she said closing the purse and slipping it back into the bag. ‘This one’s on me.’ She handed fifty pence to the dinner lady with a curt smile and managed to hold both our meals in one hand whilst guiding me by the arm with the other. ‘Well. I hope you realise it means you have to put out later.’
12
The Dead Girl
‘Before you kick off, I’m just doing my duty,’ Donna said, as I swung my body into the bus shelter and slumped onto a plastic seat. At the other end of the bench sat a man with one leg cocked up like a dog’s ear, as he sipped from a can of no-brand beer.
‘I cannot believe you’re doing this,’ I said, staring angrily into the distance. ‘It’s bullshit.’
Word had reached Dad that I’d bailed on my last therapy session. As punishment he’d arranged for Donna to act as chaperone. (He was unable to frogmarch me to the couch himself whilst he was still on day-shifts.) Donna coming with me didn’t bother me in itself, but for some reason the fact it was arranged behind my back made me seethe.
‘Whatever,’ Donna said, putting her earphones in and switching on her iPod. ‘Give me a shout once you’re speaking to me again.’
‘I hope you’re fully charged,’ I said, and turned my head to the wall.
I could tell that somebody was staring at me but I didn’t want to look up. I tried to focus my anger at the ground, where globs of chewing gum formed odd maps in the concrete, but eventually the urge to look was irresistible. The man was leering at me with wide, expectant eyes.
‘Cheer up love,’ he said with a wink. ‘Might never happen.’
All of a sudden I had a target for my fury.
‘How the fuck do you know what has and hasn’t happened to me?’ I barked at him as he recoiled into the opaque glass wall of the shelter, clearly taken aback.
