Mouths of Babes

by Stella Duffy

  Daniel ran a careful hand over his battered face. “Nice bit of psychology, Saz. Might even be true for you, and Ewan. Was true some of the time for me, Andrea occasionally. But I don’t believe it was true for Will, never has been. He really did think he was better than the rest of us.” He looked back at the man stretched out on the big soft sofa. “And he still does. It’s why you and I know that we damaged Janine Marsden, and he decided to believe it was all just a good time gone too far. Will Gallagher can’t be wrong. He doesn’t know how to be.”

  They went out into the street together. Saz wasn’t going to walk away with him, but Daniel held the door for her, laughed at her for suddenly coming over all squeamish now. Asked if she was afraid of him. She was, but she wasn’t going to say so. He said goodbye in the street and she nodded her agreement. Before she had crossed the road, Saz was on her mobile calling Carrie; she wanted to hear Matilda’s voice. But their home phone and Carrie’s mobile were both ringing unanswered. Nor did Carrie respond to the seven increasingly worried texts Saz sent. She kept trying all the way home in the cab. Carrie never failed to answer her phone. Saz was very cold.

  FORTY

  “Hi, Janine.”

  “Hello, Sally. You look good. Well.”

  “Yeah, I am. Was. You look a bit tired?”

  “Drugs. Prescription ones,” she added quickly. “They’re very ageing.”

  “Right … well … how are you?”

  Saz spoke very slowly and very carefully.

  Janine laughed. “You don’t need to talk to me like I’m mad. I mean, I might be – a bit – but it’s not the same as being stupid. You can talk normally.”

  “Then what the fuck are you doing here?” This time Saz shouted. Matilda jumped at the noise and started to grizzle, Carrie grinned and then groaned in pain, Janine winced. “OK, how about somewhere in between?”

  Janine was sitting on the edge of the sofa, directly opposite Saz as she stood in the doorway. Matilda was lying behind Janine’s back, grizzling just a little as she usually did when she was tired.

  Saz took a very small step forward. “It’s way past time for Matilda’s sleep, Janine. Shall I put her to bed?”

  “I said that.”

  Carrie spoke out the side of her mouth. She was less than three feet to Janine’s left against the glass door that opened on to the little balcony. She had taken her shirt off and was holding it to her cheek and chin. The shirt was wet with blood and there was a narrow gash down the right side of Carrie’s face. Carrie’s beautiful face.

  Carrie tried again, slower this time. “Janine wanted to wait until you got home.”

  “Are you OK?”

  Carrie tried to shrug. “Don’t know. Still, you’re right about it not being boring at home with the kid though.”

  “Yeah, always plenty to do.” Saz’s speech was measured, careful, watching Matilda. Her eyes to Carrie. “What … ?”

  “Don’t really know. Told you to put your bottles in the recycling though, didn’t I?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, remember next time.”

  Janine was stroking Matilda’s thick curls with one hand. In the other, six inches from the baby, she was holding a broken bottle. The wine bottle Saz and Molly had finished the night before. The wine bottle she’d picked up off the back doorstep and smashed across Carrie’s head and face when Carrie opened the door.

  She smiled at Saz. “Your baby’s nice.”

  “We think so. Can I hold her?”

  “No.”

  “How about you give her to Carrie?”

  “No.”

  They looked at each other then, for a while, quietly. The only sound Matilda’s soft whimper as she began to fall asleep, the occasional shudder as another truck rolled past outside.

  Saz couldn’t stand it and began to speak. “I’m so sorry, Janine. I’m so sorry. While we were waiting for you, it all came back, all the stuff I’ve never been able to forget anyway, and I’m so sorry. It got out of hand, we didn’t mean to, I’m sure none of us meant to … it was just … we were young, stupid, we were pissed and stupid and I’m so sorry. Please can I … … please don’t hurt her … please?” Holding her arms out for Matilda, trying to explain, placate, make better. Trying not to scream. Trying not to cry. Failing.

  Janine wasn’t crying. She was very calm. “I thought you’d get here sooner. You stayed ages with them.”

  “We were waiting for you.”

  “I got lost.”

  “You should have called Will. One of us could have come to find you.”

  “I tried. His phone was engaged all the time.”

  “Not all the time.”

  “When I called it was engaged.”

  “He was calling his agent, his manager, everybody. He thought you’d have left him a message. You could have left a message? We’d have come to meet you.”

  “I don’t like leaving messages. They scare me. And I don’t have a phone of my own anyway, I was in a phone box and this woman was waiting to use it. She wanted me to move out so she could use it. I think I might have made a fuss. There were cars beeping and carrying on when I left. She was horrible. Mean to me. Anyway, after that I didn’t want to see you all together. Not really.”

  “So how did you know to come here?”

  “Daniel gave me your address. I was going to come here yesterday, when you had coffee. He said you were all having coffee?”

  “Yeah. We did.”

  “Well, he wanted me to come then. Surprise you all. Thought it would be really funny. Only I got scared, I couldn’t do it. So I rang Will instead, and I meant to come to his house today. I tried. Really.”

  Carrie shifted against the door, groaned softly, holding the bloody shirt to her face.

  Janine looked at Carrie in surprise, registered her sitting there, the blood. “Sorry, that was an accident.”

  Saz and Carrie spoke at the same time. “Accident?”

  “As in I didn’t mean to hurt your friend. She said she’s not your girlfriend, just friend?”

  Saz smiled at Carrie. “Ex-girlfriend, best friend.”

  Janine nodded. “That’s nice. But see, I was really upset when the woman wouldn’t let me use the phone box and by the time I’d walked here I’d got furious with you lot, all over again, and I got to your back steps and the bottle was there and it just came out of me when she opened the door.” She turned to Carrie. “When you opened the door. I am sorry. You know that, right?” Carrie didn’t bother to try to answer. Janine looked back to Saz. “We’re all sorry. Aren’t we?”

  Saz steadied herself against the door jam. She thought she might throw

  “I don’t know, Janine. Really. I think they are. I know I am. For all of it. The whole fucking lot. But please don’t make this any worse. We’ve lost Ewan … ” Then she remembered that Janine had been asking to see all five of them. “Fuck. I mean … oh shit … you know that, don’t you? About Ewan? You remember?”

  Janine smiled then, a proper smile, pleased with herself. “Of course I knew he was dead, I was just messing with you – I knew it would freak you all. Daniel thought that was really clever of me. And anyway, that’s what you think crazy people are like, don’t you? You think we don’t remember the truth? We can’t tell fact from fiction?”

  “It did scare us.”

  “Good.”

  “Fair enough. Look, Janine, we behaved terribly, and it all went really crazy. I admit that. Absolutely. But this isn’t going to make it better. Hurting Carrie and keeping Matilda over there with you, scaring me. We can say sorry, try and make amends somehow, but you doing something else bad is only going to make it worse.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know what this looks like? I just want you all to know what really happened.”

  “I do know, Janine. We talked about it today. We all remembered it today. All of us. We talked about it for the first time. We’ve never talked about it before.”

  Janin
e looked blankly at Saz then. Not understanding, Saz thought she’d said too much, pushed too far. Of course she didn’t want to be reminded of that.

  Then Janine shook her head. “No. It’s not about that. That’s not why I agreed when Daniel asked me to call Will. That’s not it. Or maybe a bit. Not really. Not the whole thing. That’s not it.”

  Carrie was getting more and more agitated on the floor. “Oh, well what the fuck is it, then?”

  Saz wanted to kiss her for speaking back and scream at her for disturbing Janine as she sat with the broken bottle so close to Matilda’s soft skin.

  She did neither.

  Janine brought herself back to the room, this room. Explained.

  “Look, I know I was in a bad way that day, really bad. It had been coming for a while, I think. I wasn’t OK, I know that. And truthfully, it wasn’t just you guys, I think I hadn’t been OK for a long time, you were only part of it. A big part of it, the main part of it probably, but only part of it. Anyway, what I mean is, I was there too.”

  “Where?”

  “When Ewan fell.”

  “And?”

  “My point of view was different to yours. Your backs were to the wall – Ewan was in the middle. Will was on one side of him, you were on the other. Daniel and Andrea on the edges. But I was facing all five of you. I saw it all. You only saw me. And from where I was standing I could see each of you, clearly.”

  “And?”

  “And you all let the police and the teachers and everyone else believe I pushed Ewan over the edge.”

  “No, we didn’t, Janine, honest, we never said you meant to do it.”

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t do it. I was coming up to talk to you all. I wanted to ask you how you could let that happen, the night before. I wanted to confront you. But that’s all. And when I got to the top of the stairs, I saw Will’s face. And he was so happy, really getting off on it all. He made me furious. So I lunged at him, at Will. And you thought I was heading for you, and so did Ewan. So Ewan got in the way, between you and me. But that meant he was in Will’s way as well. Will wanted to see me, wanted to see what I was going to do. And I promise you, what I wanted to do was push Will Gallagher off the bloody wall, I did want to kill him – just for a moment, but I really did. Only Will pulled Ewan out of the way, grabbed his shirt from behind and pulled him back. Will got to Ewan before I got to either of them. I know it was an accident. Of course he didn’t mean to knock him over. But he did. It was Will who pushed Ewan. Not me.”

  Saz didn’t know what to say. It was all horrible, all impossible.

  “So what do you want to do now?”

  Saz looked at Matilda, happy enough on Janine’s lap. The broken bottle in Janine’s hand.

  “I want you to get Will to come over here. I want him to tell the truth.”

  “Who to?”

  “Me. You. Himself. That’ll do. I don’t care about the cops or any of that shit. I don’t trust them anyway. Who’s going to believe my word against Will Gallagher’s? I just want to hear him say it.”

  “But you threatened to tell the papers about us. That scared Will, it would fuck up his career, maybe even his marriage.”

  “I don’t care about his bloody career. And if I talked to the newspapers, Will would still deny it. That’s not what I want – going to the papers was Daniel’s idea, a threat to blackmail him with. Those kind of people have treated me like shit for years, I don’t care what the readers of bloody newspapers think. But because I’ve been thinking about it, because Daniel got me thinking about it, I’ve worked out that I do care about the truth. And I want to hear it said. Call him.”

  Saz reached into her bag for her phone and Janine’s grip tightened on the bottle. “And Sally?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dial more than three nines, won’t you? Call Will. Not the police. I’m counting.”

  Will answered his phone on the fifth try. Saz spoke to him quietly, hoping to hide her fear from both Janine and Carrie. She was shocked when Will refused to come over. He sounded drunk and tired and belligerent. She couldn’t believe he was refusing her.

  “I’ll call the cops myself, Will. I’ll tell them Janine said all this happened. I’ll tell them everything we did, everything you did.”

  “Right. You’ll call the cops that Janine told you not to call? And then what? After she does whatever the fuck she’s threatening you with? You’ll tell them Janine held a broken bottle to your daughter’s face as well as smashing up your mate? You’ll ruin Janine’s life all over again?”

  Will hung up for the third time. When she next called his mobile was turned off, and when she tried the landline it went immediately to answerphone.

  Saz put the phone down. Her legs were trembling so much she thought she might fall over. “I’m sorry, Janine. I can’t make him come.”

  Janine shook her head. “You really do have rubbish friends, don’t you?”

  Carrie lay watching from the floor.

  FORTY-ONE

  Carrie had had enough. “OK, look you two. I’ve got some idea of what’s going on here, but not a lot, that’s for sure. Then again, I don’t think either of you know much either. You know what? This is really pissing me off, Saz.”

  “Carrie, shut up, you’ll hurt your face.”

  “Your mate already hurt my face.”

  “Then shut up because I don’t want her to hurt Matilda’s face.”

  “Look, I’m in some degree of pain here, and I’ve seen enough ER and Casualty to know that if I don’t get my lovely face to a hospital soon, it’s going to take a fuck of a lot longer to heal, possibly leaving me scarred and looking like shit for the rest of my young life. Now, call me selfish if you want, but I really don’t want that. She’s not going to hurt Matilda.”

  “I might.”

  “She might.”

  Saz and Janine spoke at the same time.

  “Saz!” Carrie countered. “This is stupid, smacking me round the face like that wasn’t an accident, she chose to pick up the bloody bottle, stop being so fucking understanding.”

  Janine looked down at her. “What’s your point?”

  “That things get planned. People have ideas, they carry them through. You didn’t even know Saz had a baby, you certainly didn’t come here meaning to hurt Matilda. You meant to hurt Saz when she came to the door. Violence like this doesn’t happen without forethought.”

  Saz pictured Ewan’s body, cracked at the bottom of the concrete wall. “Yeah, it does. That’s exactly what happens. It’s almost always without forethought. That’s why it’s so fucking horrible. Surprises are always so shit.”

  And as she spoke, Saz was nodding. Because she and Carrie knew what they were both talking about, had used arguing with each other as a distraction before, with Molly, with Carrie’s other lovers, they had shouted at each other when behind the words they were laughing, making plans, thinking something entirely different.

  Carrie was still speaking as she leaped up from the floor, “God, Saz, you’re so full of shit sometimes.” Still talking as she grabbed Janine’s arm holding the broken bottle and wrenched it back over Janine’s head. In the same moment Saz crouched down and picked up a stone statue from the fireplace. It was a fat Buddha-shaped woman, heavy and strong in the hips. Carrie had given it to Saz and Molly when they were trying to conceive. She’d said that with belly and thighs that size it just had to be a fertility symbol. Molly had thought it most useful as a doorstop. Saz swung the statue at Janine’s stunned face with one arm and lifted Matilda free with the other. Matilda’s furious scream rang out over the crack of Janine’s jaw.

  Saz put out her arm, pushed Janine away, needed her to get away from Matilda, she was still too close, it was all too close. Carrie had hold of Janine’s hand, hurting her. Janine pulled away from her, reached for Saz, twisted herself, and then Carrie wasn’t helping anymore, and she wasn’t in the way anymore, and there was a clear
route straight to Saz that Janine was going to take, would take. But Carrie was falling, pulling Janine away from Saz and Matilda and in the fall the broken glass met Carrie’s body again. Pushed through skin into flesh into vein. Deep. Across her neck and skewering fresh scars, open flesh, blood pouring out.

  Janine slumped down, knocked out with the smash or pain or exhaustion. Saz held her screaming child close to her and tried to grab Carrie with her other arm, hold her up, keep her going. There was hammering on the back door, Saz was shouting for them to come in, to come in and help, whoever it was, just to fucking well come in and help. Then there were three policemen in the room, Will running in behind them, shouting out, “I told you so, I fucking told you we needed to get here sooner.” Janine was out cold. And Saz in the middle of the room balancing Carrie and her child. Half of her twisting away, holding Matilda as far from the blood as she could, her other arm dragging Carrie into her, pulling her tight, closer. Carrie was crying, hurting. Saz thought she heard her ask for a kiss, for old time’s sake. Carrie’s mouth tasted of blood. Only of blood.

  They took Carrie to hospital in the ambulance, sirens screaming. But there wasn’t much point.

  FORTY-TWO

  The police took Janine away with them. There wasn’t much to say. Saz and Will both played down the past couple of weeks, no one mentioned the blackmail or the phone calls. Neither of them had the stomach for making Janine’s life any worse. And for whatever incomprehensible group loyalty reasons, there wasn’t much to say about each other either.