“You’ve consumed me,” he whispers, looking from one of my eyes to the other, “body and soul. And when I’ve got the money, I’ll be buying the ring you deserve and giving you the life you deserve, too. I’ll be making you mine. Say you’ll be mine.”
“You know I’m yours. You banged me senseless all night and I banged you right back.”
He pulls me in close, rubbing his hands protectively up and down my shoulders and arms. He kisses my cheek and my forehead, groaning as he does.
“Does that mean you’d say yes if I asked you?”
“It means if you play your cards right, I might acquiesce, but only if you play your cards right.”
“A challenge?” he asks, cocking one eyebrow. “From you, a challenge just makes me hard.”
I laugh in his face. “My dinner’s going to need warming a third time if we’re not careful!!”
I grab it from the microwave and eat it at the breakfast bar while he checks his phone.
“What’s new in the world, stud?”
“Nothing.” He smirks and I wonder what he’s looking at on his phone. I shake my head and ignore his cocky grin.
I’M SO GLAD the weekend’s finally here. We can relax, chill out, enjoy each other. Having just made love, we’re relaxing in bed naked. I’m resting back against his chest, both of us almost lying flat but reclining slightly against all the pillows behind Joe. My hand’s resting on his raised knee and occasionally I slide my fingers down to his calf and grip the muscle there. This is nothing unusual for us nowadays. Most weekends are spent entirely naked. With one hand he’s teasing his fingers through my hair, with the other he’s stroking my belly. In my one, free hand I’m reading a book of love poems by Pablo Neruda. Joe bought it for me, I don’t know why. It turned up on my bedside table one day and he said he’d heard it was good. He loves me re-reading ‘The Queen’ over and over again. He says softly, “My queen.”
I giggle and quote the poem, “‘Only you and I, only you and I, my love.’”
He kisses my temple and murmurs, “I have a confession to make.”
“Yes…?”
He takes a deep breath which lifts me too as his chest expands. “It wasn’t cause you were working with my dad.”
“Hmm…?” What’s he going on about?
“Why I didn’t ask you out ages ago. It wasn’t cause you’re working with my dad. I mean, it could have been awkward, thankfully it isn’t. I mean, I was never gonna let my dad dictate who I’m with, especially not when I love her.”
My heart beats harder at hearing his words. He loves me. Even now, two months in, it drives me crazy to hear that he loves me.
“Go on…”
“Before I ever met you Dad had talked about you, said you were wild, but very good at your job. Always on time. Serious. But he said you were wild. Said he worried about you.”
“Wild, in what way?”
“The drinking way.”
Well, that just knocked the wind right out of me. “You thought I was a heavy drinker?”
I know I sound upset suddenly, and I feel upset, too. I don’t want to, but I feel misjudged right now.
“The first night we went out, you were in a room full of people drinking and you didn’t drink. You, I realised… well, I realised you’re not like her at all. I realised you were very different. I realised for you, going out and getting hammered is just stress relief, or fun, whatever… it’s not the same for you, is it…?”
I can feel his heart pounding beneath my back. He’s worried I’m going to take this the wrong way. I could, I really could right now. But I don’t know the extent of his mother’s misdemeanours.
“Tell me about her, Joe,” I ask, squeezing his hand, “you have to tell someone, I think. It’s best you tell me, I reckon.”
He breathes heavily into my hair, his body keeping me warm on this cool April day.
“I don’t know where to start,” he says.
“Okay. When did you notice things weren’t right.”
He groans as he blows out a deep breath. “I can’t actually remember when things were right. That’s the thing. Dad used to come round to collect me and I wouldn’t want to spoil our father-son time. I’d keep my mouth shut about her behaviour. I also felt sorry for her.”
“I see…”
“It was after he met Jules that she started being less careful about keeping her behaviour in check. She cheated on my stepfather, Jake. I heard them rowing about it all night. I wanted to run away, leave the house and go to my dad’s but she could be violent and even more so when she was drunk.”
“Jules hasn’t told me great things, Joe. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of your mother, but…”
“She’s right, though. It’s not even about tainting the memory, she already tainted my memory of her before she died.”
“You wanted her to get better? You willed her to? That’s why you wanted to study psychology. Maybe you thought you could really help people like her, maybe even her?”
He shudders, the hairs on his arms rising. “I wanted to help her. She was an addict, Het. She was so sick, I can’t even–” He slaps a hand against his face, trying to stop himself crying.
“Baby, it’s okay.”
I turn in his arms and kiss him gently, holding him. We lie side by side, looking at one another, his despair so evident.
“Tell me,” I beg him, “tell me, like I told you. Tell me.”
He’s shaking. He bites his lip. I take his hand and hold it against my cheek. He looks wrecked even just thinking back to it.
“You can never tell my dad,” he says.
“Pinkie promise.” We lock our pinkies together and I nod.
“When Jules was away, abroad, travelling, my dad was so miserable. He was like worse than before he met her. I didn’t feel like I could go to him.” I hold him tighter, stroking his shoulder. “It was bad. Some days, I wanted to kill her. I’d get home from school and she’d be on the bottle already. I used to pour what bottles I found down the sink but she had hiding places. She must have. She had friends, you see. Male friends she could get money from.”
I hold his wrists tight as I ask, “She prostituted herself?”
He nods slowly, his lip trembling. He can barely say it, but he says it. “Yeah.”
I nod, trying to be strong. I won’t cry for that woman. I won’t. I’ll be here with him and absorb all this for him. I won’t let him see that I’m weak. I’ll be strong for him, too, like he’s strong for me.
“What else?” I ask, keeping my expression impassive.
He shakes his head. “It’s too awful.”
“Tell me,” I demand.
“One night…” He swallows hard. “It was like she didn’t even know her own son. She looked right through me. I saw this all-encompassing blackness in her eyes, this total sadness… total listlessness… she was lost, in the abyss of her own, angry black dog. She began…” He squeezes his eyes shut, a lone tear streaking down his cheek. “She began taking her clothes off in the living room. It was before Jules came home from her travels, before everything got better. Mum had been out all night. I’d waited up for her. It wasn’t the first time. Sometimes I’d wait up for her and then wish I hadn’t when I could hear her and a friend in the next room. Sometimes she’d be so sick, I’d stay awake all night just to make sure she didn’t choke to death…”
“Oh fuck, Joe. I’m so sorry…”
He nods slightly. “Just let me get this out.”
I nod.
“With the blackness in her eyes, she took all her clothes off until she was starkers. Then she tried to climb my lap–”
“Oh my god!” My hands go to my face. I want to spring back from him but I can’t! I’m in shock but I can’t show it!
“She tried to… you know… she was so gone… she didn’t know it was her son… she didn’t know. And I had to fight her off, I had to push her, I had to stop her from trying to kiss me… I had to throw her to the floor and she knocke
d her head… and I was so scared, Het! SO SCARED!!”
I fling my arms around him, holding him as he cries bitterly and deeply. “Baby…”
“Somehow… the next morning… she was up and about. Whiskey in her teacup. She asked me if I knew how she knocked her head last night and why she’d fallen asleep on the floor. I shook my head and left the house.”
“Oh, Jesus.” I stroke his cheek and kiss his poor, beautiful face. “Joe, oh Joe…”
“You can’t forgive or forget something like that, Het. It’s unthinkable… it’s… it’s just so wrong. It’s eaten me up ever since. I couldn’t tell anyone!! It was so shameful. And she didn’t remember. She clearly didn’t remember. She was wandering around as if nothing had ever happened! Really, as if nothing bad had ever happened that night. So either she was a fucking good actress or she really didn’t remember what happened that night.”
“I am so sorry, Joe. So sorry.”
“When Jules got back, Jules knew straight away. She knew I was unhappy. I moved in with them immediately. But my mum, she couldn’t take it. I knew by that point she was regularly taking payments from men, lost in the mire of her addiction, her need for drink and nothing more. The vicious cycle; needing drink to feel nothing, having sex to feel nothing. Destroying herself completely.”
“But towards the end she seemed happy?” I ask, trying to find at least one positive thing to happen in her life.
“She seemed happy with her new boyfriend, even Dad said so. But it became so that she didn’t want a good man anymore like my dad or Jake, she just wanted someone who didn’t make her feel bad about herself. The boyfriend in question who got her killed seemed good for her, but the miraculous recovery she made when she first met him might have been a cover for what she’d really gotten herself into.”
I feel sick thinking about what she did to her only son. I want to smash something. I want to rant and rave. My blood’s boiling. I can’t stop this feeling of utter, desolate frustration that she’s gone and we can’t confront her anymore. It must be the same for Joe – he can’t change anything. She’s gone. There’s no way of making her life better. There’s no saving her. There’s no explaining what she did that night to him and there’s no putting it right between them. The relationship he had with her, what little was left of it anyway, was broken right then. I know Joe. He would have tried to continue to be the son she needed, but inside, he would have never felt the same again. She was the drunk mother who tried to shag her own son. Her own flesh and blood.
“You’ve told me now, baby. You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
He starts crying in a way I’ve never seen a grown man cry before. And when he needs me to hold him, and to soothe him, I do. I hold him to my breast and caress his face, his hair, as he cries. A protective instinct rises up inside of me and it thrills me, it galvanises me, it empowers me to know that he trusts me. That I can be here for him, too.
Now that he’s told me, I’m even more sure of the love we have. I’m even more sure of him.
IT’S later in the day when we’re having lunch at the Minerva near the marina. We love the food and the views here. We’re planning on maybe going to The Deep afterwards.
His phone beeps and he looks at it, perplexed. Then it beeps again.
“Dad told me to see if I can stream the local news on my phone. He says it’s important.”
“Okay…”
Whatever Warrick’s got up his sleeve this time, by golly I bet it’s good.
Joe connects to the iPlayer and we watch the local news in complete shock. Peter Levi the newsreader says, “A mysterious piece of street art appeared on the side of a soon-to-be demolished building in Hull city centre today. Hayley Oakes reports from the scene.”
We gawp as Hayley Oakes reports from outside a building damaged in World War Two, never repaired. On the side is a gigantic image of a woman with blue hair – me.
She reports, “There is no CCTV in this area so the artist remains a complete mystery as does the manner in which he or she managed to accomplish this feat seemingly overnight. I’ve spoken to many people today who wonder if this is part of the City of Culture celebrations. Others think this could be the work of Banksy or someone trying to replicate him. As you can see…” The camera zooms out and a number of people are seen crowding round, trying to get pictures and gabbling over whom could have created this work. “This has captured the imagination of many passing through the city centre. We’ve spoken to the director of the culture events and he admitted he has no knowledge of such an installation being planned as part of the culture celebrations. Perhaps someone may come forward to claim this as theirs before long. Back to you in the studio, Peter.”
I glance at Joe who has his hand over his mouth.
“No, don’t say it,” I beg.
“You know it’s you, Het. You know it!!”
“Ah, shit! It’s fucking bloody me, isn’t it? Blue hair!! Same shape mouth!! Christ’s sake!!”
I garner attention from people sat close by on other picnic benches. Perhaps they have no idea what I’m talking about, only that I’m swearing excessively in front of all and sundry.
Joe’s phone rings and then mine starts ringing. I look down at my screen to see Liza’s name and curse under my breath.
“What?” I answer, in my best tone of insolence.
“You saw it, then?”
“I’m going to wring the scrawny neck of whichever little shit did this!!”
“You’ve captured someone’s imagination, you gorgeous thing.”
“I’m hanging up now…”
She giggles. “Don’t be a stranger!!”
I get off the phone and see Joe’s on his. He covers the receiver and says, “Dad says they’ve already been calling the community centre. Someone rang Look North and told them that they’ve seen you at the community centre.”
My stomach lurches. Suddenly I feel sick. Heat stings me everywhere and the anxiety is like nothing I have ever felt before in my life. People everywhere are looking at an image of me, right now, and I have absolutely no control over it. The blue hair!! I have to get rid of this blue hair.
When he’s off the phone, I push away from the table. “We need to get to a hairdressers right away, Joe. Take me, now!”
I’m shaking all over. It’s palpable how much this feels like intrusion, how badly someone has taken my privacy away from me, my anonymity smashed to pieces.
“Het, Dad says he won’t tell them anything until you say yes.”
“Joe, get me to a hairdressers. Any will do. Just anywhere where I can get this blue off my head. PLEASE!”
We’re racing across the bridge over the River Hull towards where we parked the car. He takes the driving seat, not sure of himself.
“Het, isn’t this dramatic, isn’t this…”
“I swear, if you don’t drive me, I’ll drive myself and likely have a crash. Get.me.to.a.fucking.salon, Joe.”
He swallows hard. “Okay.”
I’m not myself, I know I’m not. But I like being under the radar. I like living the same as everyone else. I don’t want attention. I don’t want to be on TV. I don’t want anything said about me in the public domain. I wanted to be a cop in a uniform, just another woman in blue, a face in a crowd, nobody special.
We’re on the Avenues before long. Thank god the traffic wasn’t bad. Everyone’s heading in the opposite direction to probably go and see that painting of me.
We spot a quiet salon, one of the crappier ones. I couldn’t care right now.
“STOP! HERE!” I demand.
Jumping out before he can say anything, I leg it the twenty yards to the salon and arrive puffing. My adrenalin’s high. I feel like I’m dying inside.
“I need to get my hair back to normal,” I tell a confused lady on reception, “the blue, it’s a mistake. Can someone help me?”
“Oh you poor love,” she says, “home job gone wrong? Course we can help you.”
Th
ey’ve got me in a chair within five minutes, my head resting back in a sink.
I spot Joe outside, looking through the windows. A text appears on the phone in my lap. I lift it to my eyes and read it:
I’ll be waiting at home for you.
I reply: Can you bring me a hoodie? I know I’m being dramatic but you don’t know how this makes me feel. I’m not used to attention like you are.
I lift my head slightly and see he’s still in the window, looking on.
He nods his head and then walks away.
My knight in shining armour.
Fuck, but I need this sodding blue hair gone. Then I can claim it’s not me. I can deny everything. Warrick’s not going to say anything. Neither is Joe, Jules or anyone else close to me. They know better than to mess with me.
But, oh…
Fuckadoodle-do!!!
“Ash blonde are you sweetie?” the girl rinsing my hair says.
“Yeah.”
“We’re gonna try to wash out as much as we can, okay? Then get some bleach on your head.”
“Thank god.”
“Just relax, we’ll take care of you.”
I know it won’t be until I get home that I feel I can finally relax.
IT’S a couple of hours later. My hair’s nearly done and Joe arrives, taking the seat next to me as my hair’s being dried.
“This ya boyfriend love?” the hairdresser asks, her voice loud above the blow dryer.
“It is, this is Joe.”
“Look familiar, love,” she says.
“He plays football,” I explain.
“I’ve been told I have one of them faces.”
“Ah, now I hear the voice, I know what it is. You’re Warrick’s boy.”
I roll my eyes. Anyone Warrick doesn’t know?
“How’d you know my dad?” he asks, humouring the woman.
“Oh he helped me once. We were broken into and he was passing by. He was just… there.”
I look at Joe, who looks at me knowingly. Warrick is an enigma, that’s for sure.
The hairdryer goes off and we can talk normally again.
“What do you think?”
“You’re beautiful just as you are,” he says, reaching over to kiss my cheek.
Hetty: An Angel Avenue Spin-Off Page 18
