‘This is not a conspiracy theory,’ I say, snappier than I intended. ‘What is this shit?’ I push his pile of handwritten papers away, and when he doesn’t take them, I dump them on the coffee table. He looks offended. But I am one too many glasses in, and I cannot string together a convincing charade about how his research is useful. Fucking Fibonacci. Trust an Italian to come up with an Italian solution.
‘We have no idea what this number is. We should try to work it out. It’s obviously important if your father gave it to you.’ He reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away. I don’t want him near. His presence is grating, making me itch.
‘My father gave me nothing before tonight. If I cared what the number meant, I would find the telephone number of the lawyer who countersigned the document. I’m sure if the number was important he would be able to explain what it meant. After all, he would have been there when the document was drawn up, don’t you think?’ Keep your voice down. She is upstairs. I don’t want her to overhear. Was it me he was talking about, or Elle? I had thought it was me, but now I’m not so sure. I swill the last of the wine down and set the empty glass on the table, rectifying the topple created by my unsteady hand. It’s so silent without the ticking of the grandfather clock in the background. I can’t hide here like I once could.
‘But he was your father and he left you a lot. For years you have wished that your past wasn’t how it was. I thought you had resolved your issues with him. Elle said you had been up all night talking. That you hadn’t even gone to bed.’
So there is my mistake. In Elle’s version of the truth we never went to bed, and yet that is where my father ended his life. Antonio’s hand settles on my leg and begins stroking at it. But in my drunken daze, wrapped up in the wounds of my past, all I can think is how I wish it was Matt who was here with me, a man I barely know.
‘If you miss him,’ he continues, ‘if you are sad, we can work it out together. Plus, he left you his whole estate.’
‘But I don’t want his whole estate. And why are you so interested?’ I say as I flick his hand away, swatting at him like a fly on a summer’s day. ‘I told you I want nothing to do with them. Not her. Not him. But you won’t leave it alone. Is it because you think there might be money involved? You think we would be set up for life if we claimed this inheritance?’
He jars his teeth, parts his lips. Looks away so he doesn’t have to look at me. ‘You don’t mean that. I know you don’t think that way about me.’ He is hurt by my accusation, yet my stance doesn’t seem to soften. ‘You have just drunk too much.’ He picks up the empty bottles and takes them into the kitchen. Even though I know that what I am saying is nonsense, it still keeps coming out, my hurtful allegations following him as he leaves.
‘Is that why you are still here?’ I shout. ‘For the money? You were planning to leave me before my mother died. Don’t think I didn’t see that bag. But instead you stuck around because you think I am about to hit the jackpot. That I can pay your phone bill, order your takeaways,’ I say as I remember the pizza smudge on the kitchen floor. ‘This place, for example. When did you last pay a bill?’ And in this instant I’m sure that I’m on to something. When did he last pay a bill? I can’t fucking remember. He is grinding his teeth, standing in the doorway, trying really hard not to respond. But I wish he would, because in this moment I want him to hate me. It’s the only thing that will make me feel better and justify my continued silence. It would show me that he’s using me just like I was using him. I can almost convince myself that he doesn’t deserve the truth. ‘Even when my mother died you couldn’t bring yourself to offer to come with me. You don’t know how to support me. All you’ve been doing for the past three years is living off me. Using my money. You think you’re that good? You think you’re worth it?’
He storms towards me, and in a last-minute diversion of his energy he smacks his hand against my wine glass instead of my face. His hand goes back up in the air, ready for another strike, but as he looks down from his towering position above me, he lets it drop to his side.
‘Well, go on then, if that’s what you want. Hit me.’ I push up towards him, grapple for his hand but find it immovable, stone at his side. ‘You think you’ve fucked up now, don’t you? Worried you’ve lost your meal ticket, the best thing you ever had.’
But he doesn’t even hear my last words. Powered by his anger, he drives his fist into the second wine glass, sending it careering off on the same path as the first. I yelp, cower backwards, watching as the veins in his head swell with rage. Beads of red wine splatter up the wall like the bloody remains of us. He shouts something in Italian as he charges through the door towards the stairs. I have heard it before. It means go fuck yourself.
For a while I picture us years ago, when everything was fresh. Him shirtless, holding a small sanding pad, moving it back and forth across the skirting board in the same delicate way he touches my scarred leg. Back then he would stop, turn to look at me, caress me with his sawdust-covered hands. Even by nightfall the musky smell of sanded wood would be lingering on my skin. Did he really only stay in order to benefit from my desperate need for somebody who loved me? I’m not so sure now. If only we could go back to those early days. But that was a long time ago.
My heart is still racing when he comes back ten minutes later carrying a pair of thick socks. I watch as he wipes up the wine and scoops the shards of glass into a dustpan without saying a word. He inspects the wall with his fingertips and looks disappointed. In himself, but also with me. Probably. He throws the socks at me and whispers, ‘You should put those on so you don’t cut yourself. We will talk tomorrow,’ then slips upstairs without another sound.
After a while, the isolation of being alone is too much and so I follow the routine I have learnt. It goes something like this. First, fuck him off. Really piss him off to the point that he wants to hate me. To leave me, bags packed, tickets booked. Next, fuck him, a positive feedback loop. The anger brings the sex, which brings the joy, which brings the anger. So I follow him upstairs, strip, slip into bed, where I begin sliding my hand up and down his back. He flinches at first, tenses his muscles, but then I whisper, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I feel him relax. I reach around to the front of his body and touch him in ways I know he likes as the first rumble of thunder ambles across the moist summer sky. Flashes from last night come to mind as Antonio’s skin touches mine: Matt on top of me, squeezing me, licking at me. His breath against my ear. I push the images away.
Antonio turns to me and strokes my face. But before long his gentle touch turns rough, his fingers sliding into my hair, gripping at the strands to pull my head back. But it is Matt’s face I see when I open my eyes.
No, no, no. Antonio, Antonio, Antonio, I tell myself. Think about Antonio. He is the one here with you now.
‘Antonio,’ I say aloud, as a reminder more than anything, but I try to make it sound like desire. His soft lips trace the curves of my crooked body. Yet it does not respond as it normally would. There is no tingle, no fire. No rush of blood. I try to focus on him as he moves across me. He kisses my lips, and for just a second he opens his eyes. He catches my stare before drawing back as if he sees something he has never seen before. He flips me over and pulls me to my knees, dragging me back by my hair. My hip throbs as he pushes into me, my scars hot as his hand pulls against them. I moan in a way that sounds like pleasure, but only because I think I should.
I don’t know if it is the comedown from the drugs or the memory of the night before that has numbed me, but I feel no pleasure as he pulls me into the positions he favours. He knows that bent back on my knees like this is painful for me, but he continues regardless, jabbing himself against me. Spears of pain rip through my hip and into my belly. I open my eyes, see the shattered remains of the picture lying hopelessly on the floor. Tears come, a mixture of mental and physical pain. But I do not blame him.
That night Antonio fucks me twice. Both times I am pulled back like an animal, dogged from behind. The sec
ond time he wakes me, already on top of me, already halfway there. I make the right noises, do the right things. I smile and stroke his skin afterwards, and whisper his name like an actress in a 1950s movie. ‘Antonio, Antonio,’ I say. But it isn’t the Antonio I know. It is a new one, a vindictive one. One capable of selfish needs. I have created in him the things I despise about myself. For the first time ever it is all about him, and I am just a vessel from which he drinks. I am reminded what being an extraneous character in somebody’s life really feels like. I remember just how much it can hurt.
22
It was Elle’s plan, and I went along with it at the time because I was desperate. She was still angry about my thievery, and I wanted so much to go back to how it was before, when she was my hero and we belonged together. She felt bad about it too, I think, because she started asking me what she could do to make me happy. Like she wanted a way to put things right. So during our secret Saturday meetings I told her all about Margot Wolfe, and how she had bullied me ever since I’d stuck a pencil through her hand as a child. This was my chance, I thought, to make Margot pay, and to put things right with Elle.
I told her that Margot sang in a choir. That she played the flute. That her neat little sweaters had been replaced by oversized jumpers with the word TOMMY printed on them. Elle told me that made them expensive. I mentioned that she wore black G-strings in gym class that even her friends thought were slutty. That she still hadn’t started her periods, because she always took a shower. Getting your period was the only excuse, because no teacher wanted a Carrie-style disaster in the cubicles. Oh yeah, and one last thing that I would live to regret: all the popular boys at school told tales of how she was frigid, and that not one of them had been able to nail her. The only one to have stuck anything in her was me.
I spent a few weeks initiating rumours as per Elle’s plan. There were plenty of kids in the lower social ranks of the school who would trade gossip for a temporary elevation in status. Word soon spread that Margot had set her sights on having sex at the next party. By the time I had finished, there were at least four, maybe five boys who thought they were her target. Jessica had told her friend Becky, who had told Hayley, who had told Samantha, who was dating Jack, who subsequently told Nathan that he was going to get laid. Just keep your mouth shut about it. Who told Jessica? Oh, some girl. That was all I was.
There were four or five other versions of this story; some included Margot giving blow jobs. Some suggested she wanted to take it up the ass so that she could technically remain a virgin. I can’t remember what I said, or to whom I said it. Most of the stories were Elle’s and I was just the messenger. The one about the ass, though, that was mine.
A few weeks later there was a party in the park. It was June, school was ending, and there was an open invite where everybody could turn up to get wasted on cheap cider. I nearly chickened out when it came to it, scared about how I could slip the Rohypnol in her drink without being noticed. Elle was the one who gave me the drug. I had no idea what it was, but she told me that it would make Margot act crazy, wild, and that everybody would laugh. I was only fourteen, and still a virgin. What did I know?
So I kept my eyes on Margot and saw my chance when she placed her bottle on the grass to start a faux-lesbian chase with her best friend. There were plenty of horny onlookers, naturally. So I spiked the drink when nobody was watching. It was dark. Nobody saw me. Nobody ever really saw me.
Within half an hour she had disappeared with Alex Robinson, the highest-ranking alpha male in our school year. He came back with a swagger less than five minutes later, red-cheeked and sweating. When he pointed to the bushes, another boy made his way over. Then another. Then another. I would love to tell you how I intervened, regretted what I had done. Regretted that she got fucked by at least four boys, if what they said was to be believed. But I didn’t do anything. Instead I just watched from a safe distance and then laughed about it with Elle for weeks afterwards.
Margot got the nickname Margo-go-go, and the use of Peg Leg Irini slowly faded out. I even made friends with her after that, when the other girls wouldn’t hang out with her because they said she was a slut. I was her hero, and I felt pretty good about it. I apologised about her hand and she said it didn’t matter, that it didn’t even hurt. There was a police investigation into the party, but most of the boys said it was all bravado. That none of them had actually done anything with her. But Margot and I both knew that wasn’t the truth. The police examined her for evidence, but too much time had passed. They took blood, but the toxicology reports were clear. Of course they were.
After the police got involved, people gradually started to forgive Margot, started to believe that maybe she had been raped. Then it was the boys’ turn to suffer. Teachers marked them down, excluded them from class for minor offences. It didn’t matter that they were never charged. Eventually Margot became popular again. Everybody loves a victim. And she took me with her and I became popular too. My grades improved. Aunt Jemima praised me, told her friends when she thought I was out of earshot that she had finally got through to me. That finally I had learnt how to integrate. That I wasn’t all Harringford. And who made it all happen? Elle, of course.
The gravity of what I had done didn’t hit me until I was much older. I lost touch with Margot when we left school, but I often thought about looking for her again, telling her what had happened. One time I even found myself outside the clothes shop where she worked, my intention to admit my part in the ruin of her life. But I chickened out, didn’t even make it inside.
Antonio hasn’t been home in two days, hasn’t even called me. He’d gone by the time I woke up the day after arriving home. I have left eight messages from a new phone number, and another eight from the old one. He isn’t replying, and he doesn’t want to see me. But he hasn’t taken much of anything with him, so I am sure he is coming back. I really hope he is coming back. I wish I could undo all the shit I have done and make him come home. Otherwise, what am I going to do? I wish I could bring myself to go to work, but I can’t. I wish I could un-jab that pencil from Margot Wolfe’s hand and instead just tell her that the drawing she did was pretty and try to be her friend. But once something is done, there is no undoing it, and you just have to find a way forward through the mess left behind.
23
It is late on the fourth night that I hear the key in the door. I recognise Antonio’s heavy boots as they scuff over the doormat, and then as he tiptoes through the hallway, trying not to wake me. I shuffle up on the couch, grab the TV remote and try to make it look like I’ve hardly noticed he has been gone. I start flicking channels as he arrives in the doorway to the lounge. He doesn’t say anything at first, but I feel him staring at me, and I grit my teeth to stop a nervous smile from creeping across my face. My first thought is, Thank God it’s over. How quickly I have forgotten how to be alone.
It has hardly stopped raining since he left. On and off, constant storms. One minute sunshine, one minute rain. I have only been out once, in order to get a new phone. From the corner of my eye I see him shaking off his raincoat. It is new. I wonder if he spent my money in order to buy it. But I remind myself that I have done worse, and bite my lip.
‘Hello,’ he says. I flick the channel, ignoring him. I have flicked so much that I have arrived at the God channels, where literally everybody is either getting saved or doing the saving. There are people falling over each other as they crumple to the floor under God’s might. I recall the time Aunt Jemima took me to an alternative healer in an effort, she said, to help my hip. But the healer kept talking about the evil inside of me, that he would cast it out and reduce my suffering. Looking back, I think they were trying to exorcise me. Afterwards she told me not to say anything about the visit, so naturally I told Uncle Marcus that night. They argued and she stopped speaking to me for a month. She never took me again.
Antonio takes a step forward and I channel-hop with renewed enthusiasm, pushing the remote towards the television. Freeview
Preview appears on the screen, all tits and pouty lips in extreme close-up. Every now and again a girl gets flipped over and fucked from behind, with another guy edging into view to work on her face. My hip is still sore from where Antonio did the same to me the other night. I try to tell myself that he didn’t mean to be an asshole, but it’s hard to feel convinced. I switch off the TV and set down the remote.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call,’ he says as he edges into the room. His oil-black hair is dripping wet, his shoulders hunched and apologetic.
‘Did you get my messages?’ I ask. He nods. ‘Where have you been?’ The images from the television sex creep into my mind, and I picture him in some seedy strip club, spending my cash and getting his cock sucked in a room out back. Vomit rises in my throat, so I reach for a near-empty glass of wine and drain the remainder. Irrespective of what I have done, it would really hurt if that was true. I see him cast his eyes over the three or four empty bottles at my feet. Might be five or six. He doesn’t say anything; just sits down next to me.
‘I’m sorry I left. I was very angry. I’m calm now. I don’t want to upset you.’ I take my first glance at his face. His eyes are sunken in deep sockets, circles of black like smudged eyeliner. Not even his long lashes can pretty them up.
My Sister Page 17
