‘Irini, babe. Can I come in?’ He was perhaps my first brush with adulthood outside of my immediate family, and I didn’t want to appear childish. So I stood back, let him pass. He waltzed up the windowless hallway as if he was in the market to buy the place, his hands tucked in his pockets, nodding as he glanced around. There wasn’t much to see, just a dusty old mirror and a picture of a countryside duck pond. He turned back, smiled, and walked through to the lounge. I quietly closed the front door, praying that Elle would wake up soon.
‘Can I make you a cup of tea?’ I offered from my position of safety in the doorway to the living room. He was already sitting in the armchair, flicking through the channels of the television and holding a cigarette between his fingers. He eventually settled on an episode of Sweet Valley High, and seemed disappointed that it was finishing. The coverage of the Ashes series was about to start.
‘I love that show, don’t you?’ he asked as he swung around to face me, pointing at the television with the remote. ‘Which one do you think is prettier, Jessica or Elizabeth?’
I wasn’t much of a Sweet Valley High fan, and wasn’t even sure which twin was which. But I felt an urge to answer, as if it was necessary, though I also knew there was a distinct possibility that my answer could be wrong.
‘I guess Elizabeth,’ I said as I moved through the living room and into the kitchen. Halfway there, he joined me, blocking the doorway just enough so that I had to squeeze past. I caught a whiff of cigarettes on his breath. I was close enough to see the pimples on his nose. I dodged past, grabbed the kettle and filled it with water, set it on the side to boil.
‘You’re probably right,’ he said, leaning against the wall, dragging on his cigarette. ‘But that other one is a minx. I bet she’d fuck like a professional.’
I didn’t know what to say. I could hear the intro music starting in the background so I suggested, ‘The cricket is about to start,’ hoping that he was the kind of man who watched it. Uncle Marcus was, and that was all I had to go on.
‘So it is,’ he said, turning around to take a look. ‘But Thorpe was out before we even got started, and the Aussies have won the first three tests. What’s the point?’ He watched as the players came out while I rustled up two cups of tea.
‘Sugar?’ I asked. He was still leaning on the door frame. I had no other way out. I tried to remember that Elle had told me he was a good man. But it seemed so hard to believe.
He chuckled to himself and dropped his cigarette on the floor. I smelt a whiff of burning carpet before he ground it out with his foot. ‘I don’t remember saying I wanted a cup of tea.’
‘Sorry, I just assumed . . .’ I stirred a large spoonful of sugar into my own cup, as loudly as I could in the distant hope that Elle would wake up. But she hadn’t surfaced before midday any day this week, and after last night’s efforts I doubted I’d see her until the evening. As he walked towards me I kept asking myself, if he wasn’t her dealer, then what was he? He looked like a dealer, at least how I imagined a dealer to be. ‘I just thought when you didn’t say no . . .’ I said, but I let the sentence drift into nothing. He stopped just short of where I was standing. I gripped my tea as tightly as I could.
‘Well, let this be a little life lesson. If somebody doesn’t say they want something, it doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t want it. Do you get me?’
I could feel my heart racing. He was tall, and standing right next to me, he towered over me by a good foot. ‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘Well let me make it clear. Did I tell you that I wanted a cup of tea?’ He stepped forward, one foot either side of mine. I could feel his body up against me, and my hip was throbbing. I shook my head. ‘And did you tell that boy from the club you wanted him to fuck you a couple of weeks ago? No? Exactly,’ he said as he picked up the second cup and sipped. ‘I take one sugar.’
I struggled to turn, still confused, but managed to grab the sugar bowl and drop a spoonful into his tea. How did he know what had happened?
The talking on the television had stopped, and all I could hear was the deep clunk as bat struck ball. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me once. He put his cup back down behind me, then took mine and set it on the side next to his.
‘Shall we go into the living room?’ I asked. ‘Watch some telly?’
‘Is that what you want?’ I nodded, although I wasn’t sure what I wanted, other than to get away from him. But he shook his head. ‘Don’t you remember? People don’t always say what they want.’
With that he brought one foot between my feet and kicked my legs apart. I knew what was coming, and that it wouldn’t be like the first time. I didn’t want my second time to be with this man. My mind raced to the knives, the forks, a frying pan. What could I hit him with to make my escape? I reached for the nearest drawer and managed to pull it open. But he struck his fist against the back of my hand, slamming the drawer closed. I yelped in pain.
‘I don’t want this,’ I said, trying to push him away. But he was too strong. ‘Elle will be awake soon.’ I didn’t know if bargaining with my sister was acceptable, but it was all I had.
‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ he said with a smile on his face. ‘Maybe I’m not interested in Elle. You’d fetch a nice price yourself now that you’ve been broken in, you know that?’ He grabbed my cheeks and forced my lips up into an abstract smile. ‘See, you like it. You want it.’
He tugged at my pyjama top, something with a Forever Friends bear on it. One breast escaped, but I managed to grab the material and pull it back down. He slapped me hard across the face and I screamed.
‘Who are you screaming for? There’s nobody here to help you,’ he spat in my ear. I could feel the wetness of his lips. He pushed himself against me and there it was, the bulge between his legs, digging against my hip.
‘Elle,’ I screamed, but he just laughed.
‘You think she’ll wake up after what she took last night?’ He pushed me backwards and yanked at my shorts. But what he didn’t know was that I wasn’t screaming for Elle. I was screaming because she was already there.
He felt the knife as she jabbed it at his neck, and backed off. I screamed again when I saw the trickle of blood running from the tip of the blade, dripping on to the collar of his white suit.
‘Now relax, Elle,’ he pleaded. ‘I was just fucking around.’
He held his hands up in surrender, but Elle didn’t care. She reached back and grabbed the kettle, and before he could push past her, she had showered him with the contents, his skin instantly pink as the hot water washed across his face. Then she smacked him over the head with it, so hard it smashed into several pieces. He fell to his knees, crying out in pain. That was when I noticed that his belt and flies were already undone. She had saved me.
‘Elle, thank you—’ I began, stepping towards her. But she swung around, narrowly missing me with the knife. ‘Elle, watch it. Be careful.’ The blade was only inches from my face. Why would she threaten me? What had I done? I pushed myself back against the counter. Somewhere in the distance I could hear applause.
‘You think you can fuck my boyfriend, huh?’ She lowered the knife, pointing it right at my chest. I swallowed hard as I tried to back away, but there was nowhere else to go.
‘No, Elle. I never—’ but she didn’t let me finish.
‘Oh no, Elle,’ she mocked. ‘I never wanted to do it. He was forcing himself on me.’ She jabbed the knife forward but not close enough to touch me. ‘You think you can leave me and take everything I have left with you?’ I looked down at the man she was claiming as her boyfriend. He was rolling on the floor, whimpering rather than moaning, trying to stagger to his feet. She kicked him once in the head and I immediately thought of her dead dog. He dropped to the ground, out cold.
‘He was forcing me,’ I protested, and she jabbed at me again with the knife, this time just catching my arm, drawing a prick of blood. I snatched my arm away and saw the smile spread across her face as I winced, clutching at the wound, warm
blood pooling beneath my fingers. Now I was crying. ‘He was trying to—’
‘Don’t you say it. I’ll fucking stick you with this, I promise you. Just like you did to that Margot Wolfe.’ She waved the knife at my face, so close I could see my reflection in the blade. ‘She deserved it too. Just like you will. I’ll fucking slaughter you if you go near him again.’
He groaned once more, distracting her for a split second, and I slipped past her, grabbed my bag and ran. I had to get away. I could finally see that while she might have been the one person who always wanted me, she was also the one person who was always there when something went wrong. For every mistake, every incident, every time that I or somebody else got hurt, Elle was right there to orchestrate it. I couldn’t let her keep that power over me any more. I had to take it back. The last thing I heard before I slipped out of the door was his moaning, and her promising him that she was going to do worse than kill him.
I didn’t even stay long enough to change my clothes, preferring instead to run out in my Forever Friend pyjamas, smeared with blood from my cut arm. I didn’t care that there were people watching from their windows. I left for university that day, believing that if I stayed, she would kill me, either now or later. I have been running ever since.
34
I watch like a nosy neighbour from the window as a team searches Antonio’s car, while DC Forrester and DC McGuire escort him away. Another team comes in, searches the house. They tell me that somebody will be back the next day to take a further statement. With my permission they take files of paperwork and my computer, items of Antonio’s like the new coat he purchased. I can imagine the nearby curtain-twitchers watching from the shadows, making up stories. Maybe they think he has killed me. They are probably expecting a couple of uniformed officers to turn up, tape off the entrance. They’ll sit there for hours waiting for the body bag to be carried out. That’s what we do, us humans. We wait for the negativity to flare up in somebody else’s life and then sit back and watch the show, voyeuristic fucks that we are.
It’s only now that I realise how strange it is that I never saw Elle’s room in that house. But I can imagine it; in fact I haven’t stopped since the police let out the snippet of information about what they found there. I picture a big double bed, everything that is usually neat and orderly pulled out of place. Sheets full of wrinkles, the way my bed always looked on the nights when I couldn’t sleep for questions about my parents. Perhaps a row of teddy bears in various states of collapse, a few fallen to the floor, kicked there by stray impassioned feet. A water jug like my father’s, smashed. Glass on the floor. I imagine the room dated as if it belongs to a fifty-year-old woman with saggy tits and menopausal sweats. The crumpled sheets covered in traces of blood and semen.
I attack my own bed like it is to blame, pulling the sheets from it so hard that one of them tears. I ram them into the washing machine, put them on a ninety-degree wash. I kick a standard lamp next to the couch and it falls over, the bulb smashing on the floor. The electrics fizz a bit until they eventually give up. I pick up the ring box and toss it across the room. It strikes the wall before falling, landing on the edge of the waste-paper bin before dropping to the floor.
I grab a CD, something angry by Metallica, and get wasted on a bottle of bourbon I find in the cupboard. Within a few songs my throat is burning from too many cigarettes, a stacked-up ashtray growing at my side. I fall asleep, but not for long enough for the night to creep away or the sun to rise.
When I wake, I splash my face with cold water. My mind wanders to Antonio held at the police station, and I force myself on to a different track. I need to find Elle to prove that he had nothing to do with her disappearance. I can’t let him become another one of her victims. Because I know he didn’t hurt her. There was only one place the blood could have come from. The only thing he is really guilty of.
I grab my keys and the copy of my father’s will. I don’t want to wait for a flight, so I drive, my AA road atlas circa 1997 on the passenger seat of my red Fiesta. I never bought a satellite navigation system, never having wanted to find my way anywhere badly enough. I was never heading towards anything; happy always to be moving in the direction of away.
I suppose this is why Antonio was sucked in by Elle. If you push somebody away for long enough, your connection to them gets frayed. Then one day it snaps like a broken thread, and somebody else takes hold of the end and draws you in. All anybody wants is to belong. I can understand that. Perhaps this is why I don’t feel angry with him. But maybe it’s just because of my guilt.
One of the first times I remember feeling guilty was at Aunt Jemima’s house. She was dishing up dinner, all of us sitting at the table waiting. It was quiche, potatoes, peas. She segmented the quiche and began serving it on to our plates. She served Uncle Marcus, then my cousins, Jinny, Kate, Nicola, and then . . . oh! She had cut it into five. Three cousins, two parents and me, that made six. You’d think six portions would have been easier. Five required a lot more thought. I watched as she scooped up the portioned food under heavy protest, uttering some excuse about the middle not being cooked through. I knew she had forgotten about me, a fact confirmed when the quiche returned chopped up into cubes, from which we all got a helping. I felt guilty for the inconvenience, ashamed of my intrusion, the idea that I didn’t belong. I was an afterthought, someone who was not supposed to be there.
After an hour on the motorway with a belly full of nausea, I pull over into the first service station, go to the toilets and throw up. It doesn’t come naturally. I crouch, my hip painful because the air is damp and I have been stuck in a car, and stick my fingers to the back of my throat, bringing out whatever is in my stomach. Afterwards I sit on the edge of the seat and inspect a scrap of tissue speckled with flecks of Warholian vomit.
I pull the edge of my trousers down, look at my hip. It looks swollen, the scars buzzing, bright red like they always are when it gets painful. As if something inside is trying to burst out, break through the seal. I splash my face with cold water, and then wet a wad of tissue and press it against the scars. It cools the area down, helps. I check in my bag for Valium, but it’s just habit really because I know I don’t have any. My last bottle was swallowed by my father, and I haven’t yet been back to work.
I head to the shop, grab the first food item I find – crackers and soft cheese – and buy it. I order a coffee and a sandwich, knowing it will be several hours before I arrive at my destination, and the ache in my stomach needs food. I munch on the crackers, flicking the radio stations as I travel through county after county with the windows down, registering the signs as I pass from Buckinghamshire to Oxfordshire, Staffordshire to Cheshire. The familiarity of the warm concrete fades, giving way to pastures of green and an imperfect landscape of hills and dales and distant mountains as daylight creeps in. As I return. The smell of wet grass ripples into the car as I pass into Scotland.
By the time I reach the exit for Horton, a carpet of crumbs covers the passenger seat and my black jumper. As I pass Mam Tor, the mother mountain that was my parents’ house – not my house – I stare dead ahead, force myself not to look. An early fog lingers in the fields. The weather has changed; autumn has arrived in Horton. I wait for the interruptions to the greenery: the houses, the church, the school. All there, just as I expected, as if nothing has changed.
Exactly two weeks after I watched them bury my mother, I park the car, pull it on to the side of the road next to the church in a haphazard fashion, like I’m setting up for a 4 x 4 car show. The windy journey has done me good, cleared my head. I check my face in the mirror, certain that the hangover pallor that confronted me in the service station must have passed. Not quite, but I don’t look as bad. Nothing that a good drink can’t fix, so I head over to the Enchanted Swan, leaving the memories and mists of early morning behind.
It’s quiet inside the pub, and I pull up a stool, which rocks on the uneven floor. I eye up Mr Riley, the landlord, and motion to the optics with a
nod of the head. He checks the watch strapped to his fat wrist. His ruddy face is kind, Celtic no doubt, his hair what people call strawberry blonde, bright like gentle fire. He balances his weight on the bar, propped up by his two more-than-steady hands. Then he realises that he recognises me.
‘Back again? I saw you only a couple of weeks ago.’ I assume he is going to tell me that I resemble my mother, but he actually seems to remember me from my first visit. I was more than a little tipsy that night. ‘Are you new here? I don’t remember seeing any properties for sale.’
I consider who I could be. Mrs Jackson with the kids, maybe? A holidaymaker on an extended stay? A traveller on her way back from wherever it was she was travelling to? But what’s the point? ‘My name is Irini Harringford,’ I say, realising that if ever I am to find the truth, or Elle, I have to start being honest with the people I meet. And with myself.
He steps back. Now he sees the resemblance. ‘You look—’
‘Just like my mother? Yes, I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.’ I nod again towards the optics on the wall. ‘Are you serving?’
‘It’s a bit early for it.’ After a second longer to consider me, he grabs a tumbler, completes a fancy spin with a flick of his wrist I didn’t expect. Seems out of place in this tiny village pub. He holds up the glass to the row of spirits. ‘What’ll it be?’
‘Anything brown,’ I say, and watch as he empties a double measure of Glenfiddich into the glass. He scoops up some ice, but I bat my hand to show him that I want it straight. ‘How much?’ I ask, keen to make the payment now so that at any point when I have had enough I can make a quick getaway.
‘On the house.’ He picks up a beer towel and mops the counter before me, then leans back, crosses his arms across a big, overfed gut. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your father. Must be hard to lose both parents in such a short space of time.’
My Sister Page 25
