by C. J. Skuse
‘Prick,’ I said, loudly. But no one heard me over the music. ‘Pervert,’ I said again. Still, no one looked. ‘Paedophile.’
I poured myself another drink and sat there at that empty table, scratching a new patch of hives that had flared up on my upper thigh, my only companion the chocolate fountain bubbling in the centre of the table like an overflowing sewer pipe. I was forcing Fallon to stay silent when I knew she was right. We should tell everyone what Neil was like, what he’d done to us. We should light him up like a Christmas tree. We should.
But I couldn’t.
I looked at the tray of fruit and swiped it to the floor. It landed everywhere.
The music pumped through my head. All around me were people who looked like they could just die laughing cos their lives were so damn fun. I necked my wine. Then two more. The effects were welcome. It coated my rage in a cool, numbing blanket. I felt like laughing. I felt balanced. Easy. My resentment began to fade until I felt deadened to everything, even physical pain. I pinched the skin on top of my hand. I couldn’t even feel that. Every sip I took dragged me a little bit further away from my scalding anger, until my vision started to blur.
I carried on, listening to the music, watching people – grinding on the dance floor, pulling purple and white crackers, stuffing forkfuls of sea bass and couscous salad into their gobs. I listened in on conversations – women moaning about their diets while troughing mountains of bread; men chuntering out boring conversations about loft conversions and how they would have got the sitter Jamie Hardy or Jack Vardy missed and blah blah blah.
And all the while I sipped and I watched them.
Shelby Gilmore moseyed around the tables, making sure everyone was having a good time, chomping on fruit kebabs and flirting with the waiters. The table of presents she’d been standing guard at was gone, and so had both her henchmen. They’d been taken to a back room already. All the guests must have arrived. I looked at her, waiting for her to catch my eye. And she did. We held each other’s gaze for a few seconds before she looked away. Why was she so damn interested in me? Maybe it was guilt.
As soon as she looked away, I stood up, afraid that if I didn’t I’d lose my nerve. I made my way through the maze of white-clothed tables, past the buffet and through a long corridor where waitresses were all bustling about with trays of glasses and platters of sliced meat. Nobody noticed me and, if they did, they didn’t say anything. I clocked a door at the end of another longer, quieter corridor marked ‘Morning Room’, and slipped quietly inside.
Presents for any occasion were always kept in here. I fumbled along the wall for a light switch until I found the panel and flicked them all on at once. It was a large lounge area, all yellow silk sofas and ugly chintz ornaments. There was a wide snooker table across the room and on top of it sat a mountain of wrapped boxes. I walked over and just sort of stared.
I reached for the biggest present on the pile, a large pink box with a thin shiny purple ribbon around its middle.
I shouldn’t be here. I just shouldn’t be here, I kept thinking. But the longer I stood there thinking about it, the quieter the voice became.
I swallowed once. And then I just sort of did it.
I trashed that room. All over the ornate wallpaper, the silk yellow sofas, the cushions, the rugs, the carpet. Three large vases. The big pile of presents. That room went from top end to dog end in about three minutes flat.
And do you want to know what I was thinking about the entire time? As I was tearing open gifts with someone else’s name on them and snapping DVDs in half and smashing iPhones and laptops and watches?
As I squirted ink up and down that billiard table, soiling and tearing expensive gowns and shoes and cards full of money?
As I tore open boxes – hover boards, cameras, Nutribullets, make-up palettes, and perfumes, perfumes, perfumes, smashing the bottles and fouling up the room with their acrid, overpriced stenches?
Neil. That’s who I was thinking of, not Shelby. Not Max.
It was all about him.
I left the room in the dark, as quietly as I’d entered it. I headed back to the main function room. A stab of guilt hit my chest.
They weren’t his presents.
People were still dancing. Eating. And I was still sitting on my own with only a chocolate fountain to talk to. I poured myself another wine, right to the top of the glass.
After a Maroon 5 medley and a truly toe-curling ten minutes of Dad Dancing when everyone got to their feet for ‘YMCA’, Max eventually appeared and took the seat next to me.
‘Where’ve you been? I came over just now but you’d gone.’ He was shouting over the music, looking at the mess of chopped fruit on the carpet. ‘What’s happened here?’
‘Waiter dropped it.’ I sipped my wine, concentrating on not looking as drunk as I was.
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing. I’m happy.’
‘Ella – are you drunk?’
‘Bit.’ I sipped. ‘It’s all right. I don’t even care about you and Shelby banging each other’s brains out any more, I truly don’t.’
I wanted to laugh so badly. His confused little face and big eyes were making me laugh. I was on the knife edge of hysterics for no reason at all.
Max sat down, going into lip-rub overdrive. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m not stupid, Max. You should go and dance with her,’ I leaned in to him and shouted. ‘Grind on that. See how she likes it.’
‘Ells, let me explain.’
I snorted, reaching past him for the bottle and filling my glass again. ‘You don’t have to. Honestly. I couldn’t be more fine. I just want to sit here with my wine and not care. OK? I’m sick of feeling stuff, so I’m not going to. I don’t want to think about you or Shelby or your dad. Or my mum. Or Zane. Or the Shaws. And this is helping a really lot.’
Max snatched my glass out of my hand. ‘You’re not having any more.’
‘Yes, I am. You can’t stop me. You’re not my best friend any more. I’m going to find a new friend, OK?’ I grabbed the other wine bottle on the table. ‘Here she is. Here’s my friend. She’s called Blue Nun.’ I laughed again. ‘God, I’m so funny when I’m drunk.’ I dropped the bottle on the floor. ‘You should be writing some of this down.’
‘I hate seeing you like this.’
‘Like what? I thought you’d like me better like this – all loosened up and joining in?’
He watched me pour myself another glass. ‘What about your training?’
‘I don’t care. I am fearless. I’m in the Fearless Five. I have no fear.’
‘Ella, for Christ’s sake, you’re shouting!’
I glugged my wine and looked at him. His face whirled in and out of focus.
‘We didn’t have sex. Just – other stuff. We don’t even kiss. I feel terrible, Ells.’
‘You poor soul. I wonder if there’s a helpline you can ring?’
I amazed myself with how calm I felt. I watched a tear fall onto his lapel and, for some reason, found it incredibly funny. I laughed in his face.
‘Aww, Maxy. ‘Why so sssssserious?’ I pinched his cheek and he baulked away from me. ‘So what’s her blow job game like? Maybe she could give me some tips.’
‘Stop it.’
‘What? I’m interested. Does she spit or swallow? Do you finger-bang her at the dinner table while Neil’s carving the roast?’ I dissolved into giggles. ‘Come on, gimme deets. Does she have that vibrator you wanted to get me from Ann Summers? The one that “goes from kitten lick to road drill at the touch of a button”?’ I snorted like a pig. That made me laugh even more. I hadn’t felt so happy in ages.
‘It wasn’t some long affair, Ella, I swear to you.’
‘It’s fine, Max. I don’t feel bad you’re having sex with your cousin. I don’t feel anything. In fact, I feel so good, maybe we could try again now? Yeah, while I’m drunk! Let’s go out to the car park and you can bend me over the Porsche. Your dad would love that, wo
uldn’t he?’ My hand crept to his crotch like a spider and started squeezing.
‘Christ’s sake stop it.’ He gripped my wrist and shoved me away.
‘I thought you wanted me to want this? Why are you acting like the Virgin Mary?’
Another tear fell down his cheek. ‘I’ve never seen you like this. It’s not you.’
‘What – happy? I am funny when I’m drunk, aren’t I? Go and ask the DJ to play a song for us. Maybe he’s got that Taylor Swift one you pretend not to like.’
He blinked quickly. ‘We need to dry you out and get you home.’
‘Oh yeah, like that’s a good idea.’
‘Your dad’s going to kill me.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘He only wants me to be happy. And I am now. I feel, like, freeeeeee. All that stuff I used to cry about, s’all gone. I don’t even care about my baby any more.’
‘You don’t have a baby. Fallon has a baby.’
‘No, my baby,’ I shouted over the music. ‘My dead baby.’
Everything went to black. When I opened my eyes, I was sitting on the floor, and my chair lay on the carpet beside me. ‘Ooh, what happened then?’
I could hear his voice but I didn’t know where he was. ‘Why did you say that?’
‘Max?’
The room was spinning around and around and around, and everything swam past my face so quickly. I couldn’t focus on anything. Nothing would stay still.
‘Why would you say that, Ella? Fallon’s had a baby, not you.’
His face was spinning past me and coming back, spinning past and coming back. Something was bubbling up from deep inside. Something was going to happen.
‘God, stay still already. Ooh, I need to be sick,’ I said, getting to my heeled feet.
I headed out through a mass of laughing, sequinned people, towards the fuzzy doorway and into the brightly lit reception area. Outside it was dark and cool. Two peacocks were pecking about the front entrance and I barged straight through them, breathing in the cold night air, vision swimming, stomach lurching. My body convulsed with the urge to vomit. I tottered across the gravel as quickly as I could, past the parked-up cars, making it over to a topiary version of Mr Toad, behind which I vommed as though it was an Olympic sport.
When I was sure I was done, I sat down on the low wall and shivered. The lights at the entrance shone like dazzling balls of sunshine and the whole world looked like it had been put inside a salad spinner. Closing my eyes did little to stop it. I shivered.
‘Ella, talk to me.’ A voice somewhere above me. I opened my eyes.
‘I’m going to be sick again. I need to stay here.’
A warm covering fell around my shoulders – Max’s jacket. He crouched down in front of me, putting his hands on my knees.
‘I don’t know what I’m saying,’ I cried. I puked again behind Mr Toad. I’d loved that book when my dad read it to me as a kid. My head banged like a church bell. ‘My head hurts.’
‘I know, but…’
‘I want my dad,’ I said, awash with sadness. ‘Can you get my dad?’
‘Ella.’ He was sobbing. Someone was slapping my cheek. ‘What baby?’
‘Ssh,’ I said. ‘Get my dad. Please. I want my dad now.’
There was a long string of drool leading from my mouth to my hand. I needed to lie down. I lay on the cold wall, hitched my legs up and watched the world spin and spin and spin and go blacker before my eyes. I don’t know what I said then. I don’t know what else Max said, but I could still hear his voice. Then I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew, I was in someone’s arms, being carried like a child. My right leg was freezing cold. I’d torn a big hole in my tights and I only had on one shoe. I heard a man shouting.
‘Do something useful, Max, open the damn door.’
I knew that voice. Oh God, was it Neil? I couldn’t move my body. If Neil was taking me somewhere there was nothing I could do. Nothing at all. I would be his all over again.
I opened my eyes and the world was still whizzing past at fifty miles an hour. But I looked up and saw my dad’s stubbly chin, and smelled the coffee smell of his bobbly green jumper. And I knew it was all right to go to sleep.
‘So that was when Max found out about your baby?’
20
A Mystery is Solved
Yeah. The baby I lost.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Fallon was sleeping over – we’d been to the carnival the night before. David and Ollie were living at home then, so she was in my room on the fold-out bed. I woke up with the worst tummy ache. And then I felt the wet between my legs and I panicked because I thought I’d come on in the night. I hadn’t had a period for ages so I knew it would be a lot of blood. I was worried about how the hell I was going to get to the bathroom without her seeing me. I pulled my hand out from under the duvet and it was red. Cherry red. Then Fallon woke up, and I just started sobbing uncontrollably.
‘Ella? Are you all right? What’s that on your hand?’
And then I told her. I told her I’d come on and it was bad.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ she kept saying.
She was amazing, I never realised how much at the time. She told me she had heavy periods too and she’d seen it all before. She helped me strip away the duvet and got me loads of wet wipes and flannels without anyone else seeing. She cleaned it all up. And it was all fine. Until she saw it in the bed. This little tiny jellified shape, like one of those jelly aliens we used to win on the grabbers at the Pier. It was about two inches long, almost see-through. Two stubby little arms. Legs like a baby bird’s. A nub of a nose. Ears like the tiny Yorkshire puddings on my doll’s house roast beef.
There were blood clots all around it on the bed but this was perfect.
‘Oh my God, Ella.’
Fallon started crying, and I started shaking violently all over. But she didn’t say anything else, she just sort of… tidied it up. I sat on a folded-up bath towel as she changed the bed, kept me warm and made me a mug of sweet tea. She wrapped the thing in a thick coil of toilet paper and asked me if I wanted to bury it. She even gave the heavy period excuse to Dad – we had to tell him something. My mattress was ruined. The most embarrassing part of the whole thing for me was that Fallon didn’t ask me whose baby it was – she just guessed.
‘It was Neil, wasn’t it? That day we came to the island for Max’s birthday. I knew you were weird that day. I knew he’d done something then.’
I didn’t say a word. That way, it was still a secret. That way, I couldn’t get into any trouble. But she just knew.
At school the following Monday, she sat beside me in English.
‘I won’t tell anyone. I promise,’ she said.
‘Do you swear?’
‘Yes, I swear.’
‘Let’s not mention it again. Let’s forget it ever happened. I don’t want to think about it. It’s gone. It won’t happen again. I won’t be so stupid.’
‘OK.’
I wanted to know what she’d done with it but I never asked her. And she never told me. Because that was the end of it. The proof that anything had ever happened to me was dead. It didn’t matter where it went. I assumed she’d flushed it down the toilet. That’s what we’d always done with goldfish.
*
I opened my eyes to white light and clanking sounds. Blue curtains. People talking. Feet shuffling. Phones ringing. There was a strong stench of vomit and bleach. I definitely wasn’t in my bedroom. I wasn’t even at home. But Dad was sitting there beside me, looking at me the way he’d look at the mummified Stone Age baby in the museum.
‘Dad?’ My throat was sore and my voice came out croaky, as though it had been dragged out of my throat, sandpapered, then shoved back down again.
‘Hello, darling,’ he said. I felt his hand on my scalp, so gently. ‘How are you feeling?’
That was when I felt a strong pull in my stomach. I ached all over. ‘Horrible. Why am I at the hosp—’ My voice broke in the mid
dle of what I was saying. ‘Why can’t I speak? Why does everything hurt?’
‘You’ve got alcohol poisoning,’ said Dad. The words looked as though they hurt him to say them. ‘They had to pump out your stomach.’
I went to lift my arm but it was attached to something. I was on a drip. ‘Oh my God.’ My legs were bare. My tights and shoes had gone. So had my dress. I was in a papery hospital gown. ‘Where’s my clothes?’
‘They had to take them off. You wet yourself.’
‘I what?’
I hadn’t wet myself since I was about six. My system flushed clean of alcohol, I felt everything again – embarrassment, shame, anger, all screaming inside my head like a thousand clowns. How I’d acted. Falling off the chair. Puking behind the Mr Toad hedge. People all around watching and laughing. Max pleading. And what I’d said.
‘The drip’s just to rehydrate you,’ said Dad. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
I had a memory of Dad carrying me to the back seat of the car. He’d rested my head on the folded-up blanket we used to take on picnics when I was little. We’d taken it to the zoo the time Ollie had hidden a cricket in my pork pie. Why was I remembering that now?
‘I wish I was dead.’
Dad stood up to begin the lecture. ‘How could you be so silly? Why did you drink so much? Why were you drinking at all? What about your training?’
The stress vein had emerged on Dad’s forehead. Oh God, I hated seeing him so worried about me. I coughed and then regretted it cos my throat was so raw. ‘Owww.’
‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ he said, but he kept rambling on about irresponsibility and why ‘the Rittmans hadn’t looked after me’ and how Mum used to ‘like a drink’ so that must be where I got it from. I just lay there and looked at him through watery eyes.
‘Dad?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Could you just give me a hug, please?’
He looked as though he was about to say something more, but stopped himself and stood up, lifting me until I was in a sitting position. I closed my arms around him and cried and cried into his bobbly green jumper.
