by Phil Earle
I passed out eventually, once my pulse had calmed, and must have slept deeply, because I didn’t hear anyone coming through my door. In fact, I didn’t know about anything until Naomi’s hands were round my neck.
God knows what she must have thought when she found me bloodied, but it didn’t put her off straddling me, her knees pinning my shoulders to the mattress.
‘You bitch!’ she yelled. ‘You grassed me up, didn’t you?’
I would have shaken my head had she not been throttling me, so had to settle for a muffled, ‘To who?’
‘You know who! The rozzers, that’s who.’
I tried to deny it, not knowing if coming clean would serve me any better than lying.
‘Well, who else did, eh? You’re a lying sack of shit. I know it was you. It had to be.’
Her eyes were glinting red, the devil forcing its way through her hands, which were squeezing me harder and tighter.
‘Now you need to listen to me, cos I won’t say this again. Don’t you ever, EVER, disrespect me again. I can look after myself. I’ve been doing it all my life so I don’t need you wading in trying to be my mother. You hear me?’
I nodded quickly, forcing my neck to move against her grip, desperate for her to let go, which she did, before towering over me.
She looked at my arm, then gazed down at her clothes, scowling at the sight of my blood smeared on them.
‘Now look what you’ve done, you skanky cow. If you’re going to cut yourself have the decency to clean it up, will you?’
I pulled the duvet back over me, but the damage was done. In that instant she knew what I was about and it didn’t matter that she cut herself too. This was ammo. It was all she needed to make life difficult for me.
‘That’s the last time I take you drinking,’ she said, a sneer on her face. ‘I’ll tell you what you are. I’ve seen your type before. You’re a Jonah. Everything you touch turns to shit. So keep away from me and keep your mouth shut. I don’t need your bad luck anywhere near me. You got it?’
Tears stung as I nodded. She had it spot on. I needed to get out of here, quickly, before I brought everyone and everything crashing down with me.
Chapter 36
There was something mesmerizing about the waves, the way they broke against the rocks. Nothing put them off or distracted them, each of them approached the shore with the same intention and the same result as the one before.
I looked on, wishing that everything could be the same for me, that I could attack everything with the same simplicity, the same belief that I was going to succeed rather than wreck everything around me.
I focused on nothing but the sea, hoping I’d discover the answer there. I wasn’t going to find it through the others, not through Naomi or Patrick, Ade or even Bex. I had to try and figure it out myself, but I had no idea where to even start.
The tide had started to ebb when I heard someone approaching from behind and I leapt to my feet, fearful of another throttling. My shoulders sagged with relief to see it was only Ade, the usual hopeful grin plastered on her face.
I hoped there wasn’t a lecture on the way. I didn’t know how much of it I’d be able to take without running away or flinging myself off the edge.
I was surprised, then, when she stopped a few metres short of me, yanked the rucksack off her back and eased herself on to the grass.
‘Are you thirsty?’ she asked, brandishing a bottle of water.
I nodded, dehydrated enough not to throw it back in her face.
‘I see Naomi came to visit you this morning.’ It was a statement, not a question, and I hadn’t a clue how she knew. So I asked her.
‘It’s not a question of mind-reading. I’ve been with her long enough to know that if she has a problem with you she will always try and sort it out quickly.’ She paused as I rubbed at my neck. ‘Plus I can see her fingermarks on your throat. I hope she did not hurt you.’
I blushed, not realizing she’d left me a reminder at how much I’d let her down.
‘I’m all right. She only gave me what I deserved.’
Ade sighed deeply. ‘Ah, there you go again.’
‘Eh?’ I was confused. ‘I don’t get you.’
‘Always so quick to blame yourself.’ Her eyes bored a hole in me. ‘So tell me, what did you do that was so wrong?’
‘Don’t matter now, does it? Too late to take it back.’
‘Yes, that’s true. But sometimes saying it out loud lets you see it in a different way.’
She was starting to get on my wick. I knew what she was doing. I’d heard it before and I wasn’t biting.
‘It doesn’t matter, Daisy. On this occasion, you don’t even need to tell me. Because I know what you did. We all do. That is why the others were off with you last night. That’s why, to the rest of us, you are something of a hero.’
I couldn’t believe she was calling me that. It summed up everything that was wrong with her. Ever since we met she’d got it wrong. She’d called me a lucky charm, told me I was talented like my mum, and now I was a hero? It was too much.
‘What are you talking about? How can grassing Naomi up make me a hero? Because of me, she’s in trouble with the police, Eric’s not speaking to either of us and she nearly strangled me to death!’
Ade was on her feet as quickly as me.
‘Because of you, my friend, Naomi was able to come home last night. Because of you, the police found her partially clothed. Because of you, the boy she was with was not able to have sex with her while she slept.’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘See what I mean about saying things out loud? Tell me now that you shouldn’t have made that call. I dare you.’
I wanted to scream at her. I hated the logic she was trying to spew when she had no idea about me.
‘If I hadn’t agreed to go back with her to that flat, then there wouldn’t have been any need to call the police in the first place, would there?’
This seemed to amuse her even more, her shoulders jiggling as she spoke. ‘Oh, Daisy. You have not got to grips with Naomi at all, have you? If you had refused to join her, she would have gone anyway. She would have drunk more quickly, passed out earlier and been raped by the time you got home. I’m not saying that you didn’t make a mistake. It wasn’t the best idea to leave the others like you did, or to drink your bodyweight in left-over lager …’
I winced, knowing now she’d had the low-down from Naomi.
‘… but you have not damaged anyone. Far from it. Because of you, Naomi did not get hurt.’
My head throbbed with anger. I could feel it surging through my body, through every muscle, into each of my knuckles. In that moment I really did want to let rip at her.
‘What is it with you?’ I yelled. ‘Are you some kind of mystic or something? All I ever hear from you is what I’m not capable of, when you know nothing about me.’
It felt good to get it out, so I let myself go.
‘All right, so you’ve read my files and you’ve seen the state of my arms. You’ve talked to your poncey shrink mates and between you you’ve got me pigeon-holed. Worked out what label I’ve got round my neck. Well, I’ll tell you. Whatever label you wrote out, it’s wrong. You haven’t got a clue what I’ve done or what I’m capable of. But if you keep pushing me, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you it all, then you’ll get hurt too! At least then I’ll have you off my back.’
I stomped past her, knocking her shoulder with mine before slumping on to a rock, my hands shaking as I knocked a cigarette together.
‘Wow,’ she said, following me. ‘I had no idea that you were so powerful.’
What was she talking about? See? She had it wrong again. I wasn’t powerful at all. Everything I did hurt someone, but she didn’t get it and continued to goad me.
‘Do you honestly think that your words have the power to hurt me?’ It was alien for her to talk to me without a smile on her face. ‘
This is what you are saying, isn’t it? That if you tell me what happened before the crash, then the same thing that happened to your dad will happen to me?’
I nodded, smoke billowing out of my mouth.
‘Well, let me tell you something. There is nothing you can say that will hurt me. There is nothing you can say that will surprise, shock, disgust me or make me walk away from you. Because whatever you think you have done, I have done worse.’
I was the one who wanted to laugh now. Was she for real? She ambled around every day, smiling and joking and jollying us all along. She was a bloody cheerleader. She couldn’t hurt anyone if she tried. So I told her that, in those exact words.
‘A cheerleader?’ She looked at me with wide eyes. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘No, I’m not. Look, I’m grateful that you found me that first night, and that you kept me out of hospital, but you don’t know how I feel. How could you? You’re nothing like me.’
‘Is that right? So tell me, if I was more like you, if I was as powerful as you, would you tell me what was going on in your head?’
This was a non-conversation. We were so different, on such different levels, that there was no harm in saying yes.
So I did. Which pleased her immensely.
‘Then this is a breakthrough.’ She grinned and unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve. And in that instant everything changed.
Chapter 37
Hangovers had the potential to stop me thinking clearly. I’d learned that pretty quickly after arriving at Bellfield. It fact, they stopped me thinking at all. That was part of the reason I drank so much.
But as I sat on the edge of the cliff I really regretted getting tanked the night before, because I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
It was like I’d been sucked into a twilight zone movie or something, as there was Ade sat beside me, her arm naked to the sun, her dark brown skin littered with line upon line: the same lines that decorated my own.
I was so shocked that part of me wanted to laugh. It was absurd.
But I didn’t. Instead I reached out slowly and rested my hand on her forearm, surprised when she didn’t flinch or pull away.
There was the same smile, the same warmth, but a very different Ade now, which brought problems of its own, as immediately I felt the guilt in me swell, remembering how I’d spoken to her, how I’d insisted she couldn’t have a clue about what I was feeling.
I wanted to say sorry but knew it wouldn’t come anywhere close to covering it. I hoped my hand on her arm might say more.
‘I haven’t shown you this to make you feel ashamed,’ she said brightly, ‘so you can get rid of that thought right now, do you hear me?’
My face flushed at the accuracy of her words.
‘I didn’t mean to make you show me,’ I stuttered. ‘You must think I’m a right cow.’
‘No, not a cow. A mule maybe, or something else that’s just as stubborn, but not a cow.’
I lifted my hand from her forearm, feeling the warmth in my fingers, and looked again at her scars. There was a horrible symmetry to them, a preciseness to the intervals at which they fell, to the length of each line. They were old too, a lighter brown and raised from the rest of her skin, but obviously wounds that had long since healed.
‘Don’t think too much about what to say,’ she sighed. ‘I haven’t shown you to shock or make you feel guilty. To be honest, I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Am I the only one who knows, then?’
I didn’t like the idea of another secret, of the mischief I could do as a result, but she shook the comment off with a wave of her hand.
‘No, there are others back there who know. Floss and Eric, all of the staff in fact, some old residents too.’
‘But Naomi? Or Paddy?’
‘No, I don’t think they’ve noticed.’ She looked like she had to give it some thought. ‘None of them have infuriated me like you. Hard to believe, I know.’
She bumped me with her shoulder, trying to knock some of the tension out of the situation.
I had questions bubbling away in my head, but couldn’t work out if I’d asked too much of her already, or whether in fact she expected something back from me. You know, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours …
It was a relief when she carried on talking.
‘I have watched you these last two months, all of us have, and it has been torture. We’ve seen you carry this load around, some days so heavy that it is making you shorter before our eyes. All of us have seen it and we’ve all looked for the tap that we can turn to let it out. But at the same time we’ve seen that you weren’t ready, for whatever reason.’
She looked serious for a second before relaxing again, the trademark smile sliding back into position.
‘Me showing you this doesn’t change anything either. There’s no contract now, no expectation for you to tell me everything or even anything. I just had to make you see that you aren’t alone in feeling powerful. That other people feel guilt too.’
‘Who do you think you hurt, then?’ I couldn’t help asking the question. Hoped she didn’t mind answering it.
‘Right now?’ she asked.
I nodded.
‘Nobody.’ Her answer was emphatic. ‘Ask me again tonight, or tomorrow morning, I may have a very different answer for you.’
I didn’t understand and my frown told her so.
‘It depends how logical I am feeling, and that changes with how tired I am or whether I got drunk the night before. All these things affect just how powerful I am.’
My head ached with the riddles. All I wanted was a straight answer, but they didn’t seem to apply to me any more.
‘So when you’re tired or hungover, who did you hurt?’
‘It’s always the same person, always my brother.’
‘Where is he, then? Does he live around here?’
‘Oh no. He isn’t anywhere. He died in Nigeria twenty-two years ago.’
I exhaled deeply, felt my lungs scratching, demanding a cigarette.
‘Is that why you moved here, because of what happened to him?’
‘I was already here. I’d been here five years when he died.’
‘But I thought you said you’d hurt him.’
‘I thought I’d killed him.’
‘But how could you when you were on the other side of the world?’
Her smile got wider despite the gravity of what she was saying. ‘I never said it made sense.’ She bumped my shoulder again. ‘You of all people should understand that, shouldn’t you?’
I nodded, adjusting my position to face her, hoping she’d take it as a sign to go on. ‘I lived in Nigeria until I was fifteen years old, with my parents and brother. My parents both had jobs, good jobs in factories. OK, they weren’t doctors or teachers, but my father was responsible for other men who worked there. We were a lot luckier than others, you know?’
I didn’t know, didn’t know the first thing about Nigeria, couldn’t have pointed it out on a map, but that didn’t matter. I just wanted her to keep talking.
‘I didn’t realize how lucky we were, so instead of being grateful I made life impossible for everyone.’
‘Really?’ I couldn’t imagine Ade making things difficult for anyone.
‘I took advantage of our situation. Instead of going to school, I took every opportunity to skip off. Couldn’t understand what they could teach me that I couldn’t learn from my friends at the market. I met new people there, most of them older than me, and they filled me up with stories, about how school did them no favours, how they earned a good enough living without it. I listened to them, was seduced by what they told me, and started working for them, delivering things to other people.’
‘You mean dodgy stuff?’ It all sounded so unlikely. ‘Like what?’
‘There were many things. Alcohol. Drugs. Money itself. There w
ere other things too, things that I’m too ashamed to say out loud. I didn’t realize at the time what I was involved with. I was naive. Stupid.’
My mind boggled at the potential.
‘They convinced me to start hiding packages too. Said that they would pay me well if I could stash them overnight. So I did. Until my father found one of them in my room.’
‘What was in it?’
For the first time in her story her eyes left me, falling to her arm, which she rubbed gently with her hand.
‘It was a gun. A pistol. I didn’t realize, because it was wrapped up in rags so I couldn’t feel the shape of it. But I should have realized. As soon as I saw it, I knew these people, my friends, had played me well.’
Chapter 38
I couldn’t believe it, but there was no doubt it was true. The pain in her eyes told me that.
‘My parents flipped out, as you’d expect. There’d been no warning that I was involved with anything like this, despite being a little rebellious.’
‘So what did they do?’
‘They panicked. Thought the only solution to my behaviour was to send me away.’
‘So you all moved?’
‘No, that was never an option. If we moved to a new town it would mean my parents giving up their jobs, their home. They weren’t educated people, so there was no guarantee they would find jobs that paid the same. They had to stay where they were. It was me that had to move.’
‘And that’s when you came to England?’
She nodded, her gaze and thoughts elsewhere.
‘At the expense of my brother.’
‘Why? Had he been in trouble as well?’
‘Oh no. Johnny was a saint compared to me. And he was sharp. Had a brain in his head that he wanted to use. We would joke about where it came from, that they must have dropped him as a child to knock such sense into him. He was my parents’ great hope, the one who would make something of himself.’
