by Nicci French
Someone suggested we go dancing. He said a new place had just opened not far off and it would be getting going about now. I looked at my watch and saw that it was past midnight; I’d been up since half past five. But it didn’t matter.
We all walked there together, a group of about ten people who, until an hour or so ago, had been strangers. A man put his arm round me as we walked and started singing in Spanish or Portuguese or something. He had a beautiful voice, very deep, which boomed out into the soft autumn air, and I looked up and saw there were stars in the sky. They shone so bright and near I almost felt that if I reached out I would be able to touch them. I sang something too, I can’t remember what, and everyone joined in. People were laughing, holding each other. Our cigarettes glowed in the darkness.
We ended up near the office again. I remember thinking I’d come full circle and that I was less tired than I’d been when I left. I danced with the man who’d sung in Spanish, and with someone who said his name was Jay, and then I was in the women’s toilets where someone gave me a line of coke. The club was small and crowded. A black man with soft eyes stroked my hair and told me I was gorgeous. A woman, I think she said she was Julia, came up and said she was going home now and maybe I should as well, before something happened, and did I want to share a taxi, but I wanted something to happen, everything to happen. I didn’t want the evening to end yet. I didn’t want to turn out the lights. I danced again, feeling so light on my feet it was almost like flying, until the sweat poured down my face and stung my eyes and my hair was damp and my shirt stuck to me.
Then we left. Jay was there, I think, and maybe the singer, and a woman with amazing black hair who smelt of patchouli and other people I remember only as silhouettes against the sky. It was so beautifully cool outside. I pulled the air into my lungs and felt the sweat dry on my skin. We sat by the river, which looked black and deep. You could hear the tiny thwack of waves on the bank. I wanted to swim in it, to lie in its dark currents and be swept away to the sea where no one could follow me. I hurled in a handful of coins, though only a few reached the water, and told everyone to make a wish.
‘What’s your wish, then, Holly?’
‘I want it to be always like this,’ I said.
I put a cigarette into my mouth and someone leaned towards me, cupping the lighter in their hands. Someone else took it out of my mouth and held it while he kissed me and I kissed him back, pulling him towards me and gripping his hair in my hands, and then a different person kissed me as well, his lips on my neck and I tipped back my head and let him. Everyone loved me and I loved everyone. They all had tender, shining eyes. I said the world was a more magical place than we knew. I stood up and ran across the bridge. With each step I felt that I might never land on the ground again, but I could hear the sound of my footfalls echoing around me, and then the sound of other footfalls too, following me, but they couldn’t catch me. People were calling my name, like owls hooting. ‘Holly, Holly!’ I laughed to myself. A car swept by, catching me in its headlights and letting me go again.
I stopped for breath at last, near an arcade of shops, and they found me there. Two of them, I think. Maybe, maybe not. One grabbed me round the shoulders and pushed me up against a wall, and said he’d got me at last and wasn’t going to let me go. He said I was wild, but that he could be wild too. He picked up a brick. His arm arced back over his head, just a few inches from me, and I saw the brick sailing through the air. There was a loud crack and a violent star spread in the plate-glass window in front of us and a pyramid of tins collapsed on their shelves, and for a second it was as if we were going to step through the perfect star into a different world and I could be someone entirely new. New and fresh and whole.
Then the alarm broke over us, nasal shrieks that seemed to be coming from every direction, and he took me by the wrist. ‘Run.’
We ran together. I think there were still three of us but maybe there were only two by then. Our feet seemed in time. I don’t know why we stopped running, but I know we were in a taxi, speeding along empty streets, past shops with metal shutters and dark houses. A fox froze as the taxi approached, orange and still under the street-lamps. It slipped into a garden, a slim shadow, and was gone.
After that, there are things I remember and don’t remember at the same time, like something happening to someone else, in a film or in a dream you know you’re having but can’t wake up from. Or, rather, it was like something happening to me, but I was someone else. I was me and not me. I was a woman laughing as she went up the stairs in front of him; a woman standing in an upstairs room with one dim light in the corner, an old sofa heaped with cushions and, hanging from the ceiling, a turquoise budgerigar in a cage. Was there really a budgerigar piping away, looking down at her with its knowing eyes, or was that a strange hallucination that worked its way into the bright fever of the evening? A woman looking out of the window at roofs and night-time gardens that she’d never seen before.
‘Where the fuck am I?’ she said, letting her jacket slide to the floor in a puddle of darkness, but she didn’t really want to know the answer. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she asked next, but she didn’t want to know that either. It didn’t matter at all. And he just laughed anyway and pulled the curtains closed and lit a cigarette, or perhaps it was a joint, and passed it to her. She could feel excitement throbbing loose and deep along her veins, and she sat back in the sofa, against the cushions, and kicked off her shoes and curled her bare legs up under her.
‘What shall we do now?’ she asked, but of course she knew what they would do now. She undid a button on her shirt and he watched her. The budgerigar watched her too, daft sharp trills coming from its beak. She drank something transparent and fiery and felt its heat bolt through her body until she was molten at her core. There was music playing and it felt as if it was coming from inside her skull. She couldn’t tell the difference between the beat of her feelings and the notes of the song. Everything had joined with everything else.
For a bit she was alone in the room with the music, and then she wasn’t alone any longer. I wasn’t alone any longer. I lay back, feeling soft as the river we’d sat by, and let him take off my skirt. We were on the sofa, then on the floor. Fingers fumbling with buttons. If I closed my eyes, lights flashed behind my eyelids and it was as if there was a whole strange world, over which I had no control, waiting to explode in my brain. So I kept my eyes open on this world, but I don’t know what I saw. Cracks in the ceiling, the leg of a chair, a wall a few inches away, a face coming down against mine, the twist of a mouth. I tasted blood and ran a tongue against my lips. My blood: good. The carpet burned my skin: good. Hard fingers on my arms, on my body, digging into me. Me and not me; me and this other woman who was pulling off her shirt, buttons spraying on the floor, falling back on a bed, hair spreading beneath her; hands pulling off her bra; a weight on her. Closing her eyes at last and finding herself in a bright-lit world, full of shapes and exploding colours and rushing darkness.
‘This is so strange,’ she said. I said. ‘Don’t stop.’
2
There was something crawling along my cheek. A fly trickled down towards the corner of my mouth. Without opening my eyes, I moved my hand and brushed it off and I heard it buzz sluggishly away. I could tell without seeing it that it was one of those fat, late-summer flies, heavy with blood and decay. If I were to squash it, it would leave a purple-brown stain.
I didn’t stir, but I knew something was wrong. I managed to squeeze one eye open and felt pain screw its way into my brain. I touched my lips with my dried-up tongue. They felt puffy and cracked. There was a foul taste in my mouth: stale, smoky, greasy, dirty.
All the colour had gone now. My one eye was looking through the gloom at a door with a scruffy grey towelling robe hanging from a hook. I swivelled my gaze to the left and saw the dull grey half-light of dawn coming in through the thin curtains. I held my breath and kept absolutely still. I heard the sound of steady breathing behind me. I closed my eye
and lay there while the last shreds of dreams dissolved, until at last I was face to face with this day and this self. I touched my face, which felt numb and rubbery, like a mask. Silently I counted to fifty, then opened both eyes and gently shifted my head, feeling a queasy pain ooze round behind my forehead and flood into my temples.
Gradually I made out objects around me. I was lying on the left-hand side of a double bed, under a crooked pale duvet with a large L-shaped rip in the middle. There was a single square window quite high in the wall, an exercise bike under it that was draped with a pair of jeans and a bra. A nylon sports bag lay near the door with a squash racket on top of it. A wardrobe stood half open to reveal a few shirts on hangers. A pile of magazines tottered in the corner. A bottle of wine had tipped on to its side. The toe of a trainer poked out from under the bed. A tissue was screwed into a ball. An ashtray, a few inches from my face, overflowed with cigarette ends, which had spilled across a pair of striped boxer shorts. A digital clock showed a sickly green 4:46.
As I inched myself up into a sitting position, I saw there were smears of blood on the sheet as if painted on it in a couple of delicate brushstrokes. I stared straight ahead, then gingerly swung my feet to the floor. I stood up and the floor tipped under me. I instructed myself not to look round, but it felt as though an invisible wire was tugging my gaze and I couldn’t stop myself darting a glance backwards to the shape in the bed. I saw hairy legs poking out from the duvet, a shock of darkish hair, an arm over the eyes, a mouth slackly open. That was all. I turned away again. I didn’t know who he was. Didn’t want to know. Mustn’t.
I needed a pee, so I crept towards the door and pulled it open cautiously, wincing at the little groan it gave. There were gritty floorboards underfoot and opposite me a door, which I pushed. It didn’t give on to the expected bathroom though. There was a carpet, a bed, a figure that shifted, then lifted its head and mumbled something thickly, out of deep sleep. I closed the door. I felt clammy, nauseous.
I found the tiny lavatory and sat down shakily on the toilet. My cold, sticky body felt as if it didn’t belong to me, and I had to make an enormous effort to stand up again and make my way into the living room. I was hit at once by a locker-room smell of bodies and a late-night pub smell of smoke and beer. The room was strewn with clothes – his, mine. The table lay on its side, a broken mug beside it; another ashtray stood among spilled butts; crumpled beer cans rattled against my feet and a bottle of clear schnapps lay on its side. A garish picture was tipped sideways on the wall, and there was a red smear daubed beside it. There was also a strangely neat circle of what looked like brown rice on the floor. With a stab of memory, I looked up and saw the budgerigar’s cage hanging above the spilled seed. The bird was asleep.
I picked up my skirt from behind the sofa and found my shirt, crumpled in the corner. Only one button remained and it was ripped along the armpit. One shoe was under the table, its heel wobbly. After nervous fumbling I found the other in the corridor outside the bathroom. Holding my breath, I edged my way back into the bedroom and collected my bra from the exercise bike. It reeked of alcohol – schnapps, maybe. There was something sticky under the ball of my foot and when I looked down I was standing on a used condom. I peeled it off and dropped it on to the floor.
I couldn’t find my knickers. I knelt down and peered under the bed, then retraced my steps along the corridor without success. I’d have to go without them. I needed to get out before the man or the person in the other room – or the bird, for that matter – woke and found me. Skirt, bra, flimsy torn shirt, whose hem I knotted round my waist. Sore feet into wobbly shoes. Jacket over the top over everything, but it was one of those stupid affairs with a single decorative button and scarcely concealed the mess underneath. I longed to be in a pair of flannel pyjamas under clean sheets, minty breath, clean limbs… Bag, where was my bag? It was near the front door, its contents slopping out in a heap. I shovelled everything back in, opened the door and closed it softly behind me, scuttled down the stairs and out into the grey street, where weariness hit me. For a moment I had to bend over to catch my breath.
Where was I?
I made my way to the end of the street and read the name. Northingley Avenue, SE7. Where was that? Which way did I go to get anywhere else? My watch – still miraculously on my wrist – told me it was 5:10. I looked up and down the deserted street, as if a taxi would suddenly appear and scoop me up, then took a deep breath and set off in a random direction. It took so long to cover any distance; nothing seemed to get any closer. It was cold before the sun came up properly and I was crawling like a mucky slug along the road of unlit houses.
At last I came to a road where there were shops and one, a newsagent’s, was just opening. I ducked under its half-lifted grid and approached the man behind the counter. He looked up from the papers he was stacking and his eyes widened. ‘What… ?’ he stuttered. ‘Have you been mug – ?’
‘Can you tell me the way to the nearest Underground station, please?’
His gaze hardened into something like disgust. I put up a hand to pull my jacket closer together and tried to look nonchalant.
‘Straight that way for about half a mile.’
I bought a bottle of water and a little pack of tissues, then fished in the bottom of my bag for change.
‘Thanks,’ I said, but he just stared at me. I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t obey me. My mouth seemed too tight to move.
Strange people travel on the Underground at dawn. People stumbling home at the end of the previous day overlap with people at the beginning of the next, still bleary from their beds.
A man with gorgeous long dreadlocks came and sat beside me at the station while I was waiting for the first train out and played his mouth organ. I tried to give him some change but he said he wasn’t a beggar, he was a wandering minstrel and I was clearly a damsel in distress. So I gave him my packet of cigarettes instead and he kissed my hand. My knuckles were grazed, my nails dirty.
When I was on the train I poured water on to a wad of tissues and dabbed at my face. Mascara, blood. I tried to see what I looked like in the window, but I was just a pale blur. I dragged a brush through my hair, and changed for the Northern Line and Archway.
I arrived at my dark green front door at ten to six and felt as if I’d climbed a mountain and run a marathon to get there. I opened the door with the double set of keys and eased my way into the hall. I dropped my bag on to the floor by the metal step-ladder and the tins of unopened paint. I kicked off my shoes and went into the kitchen, where I drank two glasses of water in quick succession. Outside, it was grey and windless. The tree in the back garden hardly stirred. I took off my shirt and pushed it deep into the rubbish bin, pulling tins and coffee grounds over the top to cover it.
The stairs seemed so steep that I went up on all fours. I crawled into the bathroom and took off the rest of my clothes. I bundled them up and shoved them into the bottom of the laundry basket, under the others. I looked at myself in the mirror and it was hard not to scream at the sight of the person looking back at me: the bleary, grubby, stained, smeary, bloody woman with the swollen lips, reddened eyes and a bird’s nest of matted hair. I was like something that had been left out for the bin men to take away.
I made the shower as hot as I could bear, and then I made it hotter, burning needles of water puncturing me. I washed my hair till my scalp stung. I soaped my body and scrubbed it as if I could rub off an entire layer of skin and emerge renewed, uncontaminated. I brushed my teeth until my gums bled. I gargled with mouthwash. I rubbed cream into my face, sprayed myself with lotion, shook talcum powder wildly, rolled deodorant under my arms.
I went into my bedroom, where through the curtains the dawn had become day. The alarm clock showed 6:11. I made sure it was set for 7:10 as usual, then slid under the duvet and wrapped my arms round my knees.
‘Holly?’ muttered Charlie. ‘Time is it?’
‘Ssh. Go back to sleep. Everything’s fine.’
&n
bsp; As I fell asleep, I remembered I had forgotten to put my wedding ring back on.
3
‘Holly. Holly, I’ve brought you some coffee. It’s twenty past seven.’
For a moment I lay with my forearm over my eyes to shield them from the glare of the morning. My limbs were heavy, my mouth was parched, my head throbbed and my throat ached. I couldn’t face the day; I couldn’t face Charlie.
‘Holly,’ he said again.
I moved my arm, managed to open my eyes and look into his nice face, his brown eyes, and could see no disgust or surprise. ‘Good morning, Charlie. You’re up early.’
He looked warm and solid, in a shabby, unshaven, homely way. He worked at home, so he didn’t have to put on a suit and a public self like I do every day, standing in front of the mirror and applying a glossy face, lipstick and lying eyes; smile, Holly, smile. He was just wearing his old grey cords and a long-sleeved, mustard-coloured shirt with a fraying neck.
I heaved myself up on to one arm and took a gulp of the coffee. Harsh, hot, black.
‘Late night?’ he asked.
‘It just sort of went on and on.’
‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘You were fast asleep. God, is that the time? I must have slept through the alarm. I’ll be down in a second.’
