by Emmy Ellis
Aw…I just didn’t know what was going on. This was all too surreal.
I mean, a normal bloke didn’t just go up to someone and randomly steal her off the street, fucking lock her in cupboards and hit her, hurt her.
I was lost and confused, sitting there trying to absorb the fact that this girl wanted to stay after everything I’d done to her. I had a tough time accepting the fact that she’d truly meant it and wasn’t another Mags trying to trick me.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Only fair, right? Seeing as you know mine.”
Was she gathering information on me? Was she going to tell the police when she found enough out? She turned her face towards me, smiled, eyes full of niceness—sincerity. I’d liken her eyes to candyfloss from the fair, or a whole bag of sweets and not just one, or a bottle of Matey bubbles on the side of the bath as a kid—that was what her eyes were. Nice.
“Wayne. My name’s Wayne.”
“Nice to meet you, Wayne.”
And she smiled—a really genuine one.
And fuck me, my heart went and melted.
Chapter Five
Yeah, I knew what it sounded like. I knew it all sounded too weird. I was this maniac-like man, and now I was sitting there watching a film with Harmony next to me on the sofa, eating Chinese takeout.
I’d left the house earlier, going in the car to get the meal. I’d decided that if she was there when I got back, I could trust her. At the Chinese place, I’d stood sweating like a fucker while our meal cooked and thought about the police and their blue lights greeting me as I got home, having to explain things to the coppers, knowing they wouldn’t get it.
But I’d rounded the first tree along my drive, and there were no lights, no panda cars, nothing, just Harmony’s face in a darkened window as she’d watched TV, the glow from the television screen the only light in the house.
And here we were now. I found it hard to comprehend that this girl was really here, even with no idea if I was going to turn on her in an instant, start freaking out and really bash the fuck out of her. She’d apparently had such a shit life at home that here, here with me, was preferable to there.
Jeez.
She’d take the risk if I would. And I would. I had to, didn’t I?
I could get used to this kind of thing. Just her and me.
The film scene changed, and she turned to me again, smiled as she ate a forkful of food. She lifted her finger to put a stray noodle from her chin into her mouth. I gazed at her and felt really sorry for the mess I’d made of her face and her hair. It bloody well hurt me inside to know I’d done that, had been capable of it, that I thought it was okay, right, normal.
“I’m um…sorry…about your hair.”
My throat was thick with tears, and I could tell she’d noticed, and she smiled. That made me feel even worse—that she had sympathy for me when she shouldn’t.
“It’s cool. Needed cutting anyway.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Besides, it’ll grow. Probably be nice in a couple of months. You know, I can spike it up and all that.”
“Yeah.” I wanted to get into the spirit of it. She seemed so happy, so un-bothered, and I wanted to chase it, catch up with how she felt and be a part of it. “We could get one of those streaking kits and jazz your hair up.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
I wanted to feel as though I knew what to say, but she seemed older somehow. Like the roles had reversed. And perhaps they had. Or, maybe we were just okay with each other. It was the newness, and we were circling one another carefully, trying not to offend, being nice and whatnot. Yet…yet it was like she’d been here all the time.
She was still looking at me, lips twisted in this weird smile, as though she tried not to cry. She reached forward, put her plate on the coffee table, and leaned over, resting her stubbly head on my shoulder. She stared at the TV screen.
I lifted my arm that was trapped where she leaned on it and put it round her shoulder, joining my hands so I hugged her. I laid my chin on her head. Her hair dug in, and I felt worse now. She sobbed, sniffled, hiccoughed.
“We’ll be fine, Wayne.”
She said that just now as if she’d read my thoughts.
So I reckoned it was one of those signs, you know, fate.
It was going to be all right.
We sprawled, the abuser and the abused, at each end of the sofa, blanket covering us, staring up at the ceiling. Sharing our pasts—talking, just talking about everything and nothing at all.
The darkness surrounded us. The traffic outside was muted, sounding farther away than usual. It must have rained since I’d gone to the Chinese takeaway. The swish and whoosh of tyres on the road sounded faint, like Sellotape being ripped off a roll.
I shuddered.
“It feels so still in here,” she said.
Lost in my thoughts, I jumped. “Yeah, it’s like we’re in some sort of void.”
“In a space capsule, floating with no one else to worry about but us. I wonder what it’s like living up there?”
“Lonely, I’d imagine.”
“Hmm.”
I waited for a few minutes. She didn’t say anything more, so I didn’t either. I wanted to leave it up to her, let her lead the conversation. If I said what I thought, she’d think I was weird, but her talking about the spaceship just proved it wasn’t only me who imagined shit like that.
“Ever wondered if there are such things as aliens?” she asked.
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“So, if you were an alien, where would you live? What would the place you live in be like?”
I described a cave and woods thick with trees.
“Mine would be a castle high up on a hill,” she said. “A shiny silver castle that glistens in the sun, but the sun would be pink not yellow, and my castle turrets would be knives so no one could get in and hurt me.”
“A pink sun. Imagine it being green then. That’d be weird—like those night-vision cameras.”
“Yeah.” She laughed. “Maybe tomorrow, after you get back from where you go in the day, we can draw our worlds on paper.”
I felt so young, a teenager. She swept me up in her vitality, in her zest for simple things like drawing a fucking cave. “I’ve got the rest of the week off work. We can build our worlds if you like, pretend we’re kids again. It’d be a laugh.”
I didn’t recall anything else being said. I must have drifted off to sleep, for when I woke up, a pink sun was breaking through the curtains, and Harmony was still there, sitting on the edge of the sofa with a cup of tea in her hand.
“For you.”
She’d made tea. For me.
“Thanks. You didn’t need to.”
“Hey, it’s okay.”
I sat thinking about my feelings for a minute. A couple of days ago, if she had asserted herself and made some tea, I’d have wanted to kill her, smack her face in. But now she was actually doing it, going around with a mind of her own, and it was okay.
It was them. They made me act like a maniac.
I looked at Harmony, the pink sunshine behind her, but I couldn’t see her features for the light, and with her head shorn, she was my own little alien.
Blackberry bobble head. Ribena Berry. Alien.
If I changed those words around, taking the first letter from each word, I could make a name for her. My very own name. Blackberry. Alien. Ribena. Berry.
Barb.
“Barb.”
“Huh?”
“Barb. Can I call you that?”
“Uh, sure.”
She covered up her puzzlement, but I couldn’t explain it, couldn’t tell her why I wanted to call her that.
She’d think I was crazy.
* * * *
My trolley was quite full. I was in the queue in Toys R Us. I thought that would be the best place to go to get the Play-Doh and paints and everything we needed to build our alien worlds.
The house
telephone was in the boot of my car; her mobile was there, too, but switched off. I didn’t want to leave temptation in her way. She might ring someone. She could have a lapse, have a thought about home or a friend and want to go back.
I supposed I wouldn’t ever fully trust her.
The bleep of the till scanner sounded like a heart monitor.
“Twenty-five fifty-two, please.”
Expensive alien worlds.
I left Toys R Us, made my way to my car, and decided to go to Tesco to get us some food to last until the weekend.
“Fifty-six seventy, sir.”
I hadn’t even realised I’d driven to Tesco, got the shopping, loaded it up on the conveyor belt, packed it into carrier bags.
I didn’t even remember what I’d bought, so after paying, I lifted the groceries into the boot of the car and peeked into the bags. Meat, sausages, bananas, cans of Coke, sweets...and a hair-streaking kit, for Barb—for when her hair grew out—and six bottles of Matey bubble bath.
I drove home, feeling condemned, as if everything I did was for the last time.
I took the left turn into my drive past the first tree.
No sirens or lights.
There was just Harmony, sitting on the windowsill with half of her face visible from behind the curtain. She was smiling, glad I was back.
I smiled, too, relieved. I opened the boot and lifted out the bags and showed them to her. She laughed, danced in the window, excited about making the alien worlds.
And for the first time in years, I was happy.
We unload the groceries and shopping bags. It was like she’d always been here and seemed to know where things belonged, but I thought she may have been snooping around while I’d been out. I mean, I’d be the same way.
I secretly looked at the knife block in the kitchen to make sure no knives were gone, checking she hadn’t hidden one in my absence ready to stab me in the chest, in the face, eyes, wherever, when the time was right.
Nothing was amiss.
I lifted a loaf out of the bag and handed it to Harmony, who put it in the bread crock as though she’d lived here all her life.
With the groceries put away, Harmony made tea, then we laid the things from Toys R Us on the table, sat with our tea, and dipped biscuits in our cups. We worked quietly, making our alien worlds.
Finally, Harmony asked, “Can I use your set of steak knives, you know, to tape the handles inside the end of these tubes so the blades stick out like turrets?”
Regardless of my hammering heart, I nodded. Was this the time when she’d go to take those knives, walk up behind me with all six of them in her fist, and stab my neck, my back? Hack and hack and hack until I bled everywhere, the slits from the knives spewing blood, my body sagging? Would I be a deflating blow-up doll, everything inside me escaping from those stab holes?
Harmony walked past me, knives in one hand, blades pointing away from her. She placed them on the table and sat, picked one up, and taped it inside her tube, the blade now a deterrent for invaders of her alien world.
She hadn’t stabbed me. She was doing what she’d said she’d do with the knives. She’d told the truth again.
It was going to be fine. If I could just stop these images in my head, things would be okay.
She asked, “Want some lunch? I’m nearly done so…”
I looked at her and realised she was asking permission to prepare some food, and she seemed to know I was engrossed in making the pink bushes that I planned to put round the edges of my cardboard square.
I nodded, smiling. She stood. I had my back to her, and the terrible thought of those knives invaded my mind again.
I thought she was opening the ham. The plastic lid being stretched back from the packaging sounded like Sellotape.
I didn’t like Sellotape.
I’d made all the bushes, and Barb’s hand came past my right shoulder, setting a fresh cup of tea down on the table. She took the dirty cup away then returned and put a ham and lettuce sandwich in front of me.
Any minute now, I expected her to grab her alien world and plunge it into me, the six knives sticking into my guts, leaving a circle of slits. Instead, she led me to the living room, sat me on the sofa and left me there, crying. Left me. Like Mags would have.
They were all the same.
Except now I felt badly for thinking such thoughts because she was back, my Barb was back with our tea and sandwiches on a tray, a manky old tray that had somehow made its way to my house from childhood, a tray with a ginger cat on it, the surface all scratched and scarred.
* * * *
I made dinner. Barb sat at the breakfast bar, kicking her legs slightly and drumming her fingers on the Formica surface. Tonight, we were having fish, chips, and peas. The peas danced in the boiling water. Mags and Scott appeared in there, their faces leering at me from across the dining room table.
I’d been told to eat all my dinner, and I didn’t like the peas she’d cooked; they were mushy, processed from the tin. I liked peas in general all right, but garden peas. They reminded me of Granny Philpots, Mags’ mum, and the summers when I’d sit on her doorstep and take the peas she grew in her garden, pop them out of their shells into a bowl, and eat them raw.
Mags and Scott were still looking at me, laughing as I put forkfuls of peas into my mouth, gagging and heaving at the texture.
“Eat your fucking peas, kid,” Mags said.
My eyes watered, and I shovelled those peas in, trying to finish them off in one big swallow, saving myself the ordeal of eating them again and again.
“You’re scoffing like a damn pig, kid. Slow down and eat like a gentleman,” Scott said.
What did he know anyway? Who was he to tell me how I should eat? He was just some guy my mum had decided to shack up with. Shit, he wasn’t my dad. He wasn’t anything to me at all.
“Yeah, eat them up, kid. Never know the next time you’ll get food. This could be your last meal.” Mags sneered.
I retched, the fish and chips coming up. I didn’t want to be sick. I’d been so hungry before dinner, would be hungry again for a good many hours if I puked.
“Don’t you dare even think of being sick, boy. Don’t you fucking dare.” Him. Fork poised in the air, poking it at me.
And I tried to hold it all in, I did, but it came up out of my mouth in a fountain. Vomit landed on the table, on my plate, stained Mags’ tablecloth. I knew I was in trouble then.
“Sellotape, Mags.”
“What?”
“Get me the Sellotape,” Scott said.
“What for?”
“Get me the goddamn Sellotape, will you? Shit! Asking fucking questions!”
Mags got up and took the tape from the drawer. I sat there, the acrid taste of sick in my mouth, trying not to look at the lumps of it in front of me. I wanted to get up from the table, yet my arse stayed firmly stuck on that chair. No way could I get my legs to move.
“Here,” she said.
“Start it off,” Scott said. “Pull it off the roll a bit.”
He came towards me then, picked up a spoon that had been in the jar of tartare sauce, and scooped up my vomit, shoving it back into my mouth. He swiped a tissue across my lips then snatched the Sellotape from Mags. He wound it round and round my head. The snap and crack of it as it came away from the roll hurt my ears.
Mags looked a little scared.
“He’s going to fucking choke, Scott. Take the tape off.”
“Piss off. He deserves to learn this lesson. You don’t waste food. Do you know how many Africans are starving out there? And this kid here, he’s griping about some bastard peas, for Pete’s sake.”
I writhed and choked, knew I had to swallow or die, and I didn’t want to, didn’t want to swallow it back down. But I did. I sat on my chair, fringe stuck to my forehead, and breathed fiercely through my nose. Finally, Scott took off the tape, and I could breathe.
I wouldn’t cry, wouldn’t let them see how much they’d hurt me. That was th
e only time Mags had shown me some compassion—and only then because knowing what I know now, she was scared of me dying and of getting herself in trouble.
Chapter Six
We spent the next morning finishing our alien world projects. Barb spray-painted hers, and it set the smoke alarm off.
“Shit. Open the windows or something,” Barb shouted. She held her hands cupped over her ears.
Open a window. Right. I could open the tiny one next to the back door. She couldn’t fit through that. The biting cold breezed in, snaking its way through the warm air. Barb swung the kitchen door backwards and forwards, creating a fan effect, but the alarm still blared, still hurt my head. More than spiders’ legs now.
I took the keys from my pocket, opened the back door, flapped it about like Barb was doing with the kitchen door, hoping the house would air out quickly, hoping she didn’t rugby tackle me and try to escape. It sounded like both alarms were going off now, the one in the hallway and the one upstairs.
It’d been ten minutes, ten long minutes of screeching. I hardly registered the doorbell over the din, but it was there, unmistakable with its cheery ring.
Unsure what to do, I stood here.
“There’s someone at the door, Wayne.”
“I know.”
Barb frowned. “Will you open it, or shall I?”
“Ignore it.”
“We can’t, they’ve rung the bell again. They might even ring the fire brigade if we don’t answer them, and then…”
“Okay, I’ll go.”
I ran to the front door and opened it. My next-door neighbour stood there with a worried look. I seldom saw her from day to day, and now, when I had Barb here, and I’d left the back door…shit, I’d left the back door open! I glanced back, but Barb wasn’t in sight.
“You all right, dear?” my neighbour asked. “Only I heard your alarm…”
“Yes, yes thanks! We’re—I’m fine. Spray-paint fumes, you know how they can be.”
“Yes, I do. Was only last month Albert and I painted our hallway. Didn’t get the paint with the low odour, you see. Got it cheap, you know. Our alarms wouldn’t stop ringing either, and d’you know…”
