‘Now there’s no need for that.’
‘Yes, I know. Still.’
Stu took a gulp of wine. It was all quiet for a bit and Stu was kind of fidgety. He gestured outside.
‘Did you see what he’s done in the garage?’ he said. ‘Taking all his stuff out and categorizing it by themes for no goddamn reason. Have you seen the labels he’s put on the boxes? He’s worse than he was before.’
Joyce shook her head, firm and defiant.
‘No, Stu. He’s not that bad.’
Stu was still now, holding his glass tight to his chest.
‘You said that last time, Joyce, and look what happened.’
There was a pause. The ice was packed so heavily around me I couldn’t move.
‘We have to get him sectioned, Joyce,’ said Stu.
There was a pause. I could hear the tapping of Joyce’s fingers against the worktop, the buzzing of the fridge, the throbbing of my heart in my chest.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said.
The ice shattered, crashing down on the tiled floor. I backed away from the door. Then I ran.
Escape from the Guardians
Jules was sectioned when she was fifteen years old. One night, when we were sitting in the entrance of a betting shop, she told me all about it. It was the first time we slept rough together and a lady in a smart suit offered to buy us dinner from the local fried-chicken shop, no strings attached. She was a real nice lady, chatting to us in the queue about how her bastard of a husband had just left her and she felt like celebrating. After she’d gone Jules said that the husband leaving wasn’t the real reason she’d stopped, that it was because of my big eyes, all innocent and vulnerable.
‘Now my eyes are crazy eyes,’ she said, stabbing her chicken with a plastic fork. ‘Look at this one.’
She leant in close to me, pulling down the bottom lid of her broken eye. I could see it pointing in the wrong direction, red lines running through the white, pupil dilated wide so there was barely any iris.
‘Now look at this one,’ she said.
She pulled down the bottom lid of the other. It was green with ripples of hazel running through it.
‘You’d think it’d be my dodgy eye that gives me grief but you’d be wrong,’ she said. She jabbed just below her good eye. ‘This is the one that hallucinates.’
She continued eating, chopping up the chicken with her fork.
Later, as we lay down on our boxes, pulling our sleeping bags up to our chins, she told me how it all began.
‘It was a Saturday night, I remember because the Lotto was on and my family were mad into the Lotto. We made all these plans, how we’d buy a mansion and breed thoroughbred greyhounds if we won. Anyway, we were just sitting there, waiting for the Lotto results at the end of the news. The newsreader bloke was staring right down the camera at us, talking about a missile attack in Lord-knows-where when, all of a sudden, he looks at me. “This is a message for Julia Squires,” he says. I looked round the room to check if anyone else had heard. They were just staring at the screen. When I looked back, the newsreader’s eyes were all wide and freaky. “Yes, that’s you, Jules,” he says. Frit me half to death! But then the Lotto numbers came on and I kind of forgot about it. A week later, there’s a different newsreader and this time she’s dancing and singing show tunes at me with a feather boa round her neck. Proper belting it out. Frickin’ hilarious it was, Molls. You would have loved it. It was only when my good eye filled with tears from all the laughter that I realized I couldn’t see her dancing with my dodgy eye. She was just sitting normal and looking all serious. And when I couldn’t see her with my good eye I couldn’t really hear her either. It was dead weird.’
I lay there listening to Jules, who couldn’t really see my face because of how our bodies were angled away from each other. I think she was sort of relaxed there in the doorway, full belly, nobody to distract her, and so she just kept talking. I was feeling sleepy but I stretched my eyes wide. I needed to hear the ending. For the next few nights she told me pieces of her life this way. I could have written her biography by the end of it, I knew so much.
Thing is, people think psychotics are violent people. But the messages Jules got from the newsreader never told her to go and hurt anyone, they just told her to do daft things. Put all her mum’s magazines in the washing machine, chop spy holes into the curtains. It was around about this time that she got into buying camo gear and survival equipment. When she locked herself in her room with a bunch of kitchen knives, screaming that the zombie apocalypse was about to begin, her parents called the police.
‘The problem with being sectioned is all the other mentals that’s sectioned along with you,’ she said. ‘They say prison makes you a better criminal. Well, mental health wards make you a better nutter.’
It was in the hospital that Jules met Donna. Love at first sight, she said. They’d stuck together until Jules was discharged. When Donna came out they became a proper loved-up couple. Which is when it all went wrong.
‘If I was screwed up before Donna I was demolished after her,’ Jules said.
It was the first and only time I heard Jules talk about Donna without an edge in her voice.
I found Luca in the garage with Cora and Boy. They were sorting through boxes labelled with capitalized words: ‘GRAVITY’, ‘JAZZ’, ‘JOY’.
Boy was chewing on a deflated rugby ball and Cora was sorting through a bunch of empty Tupperware from a box that said ‘TIME’.
‘Ah, the perfect person!’ Luca said. ‘Can you explain to Cora why time is just a construct? You’re better at explaining than me.’
I didn’t say anything, just stood there with Jules’s rucksack on my back and all our other baggage held in my hands. Luca stood up.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
The bags were getting heavy. I dropped them on the floor.
‘We’ve got to go, Luca.’
Cora looked up at me with her empty box of ‘TIME’. I smiled at her to say it was OK, but kids are quicker than adults at knowing when someone’s bluffing. Luca rolled his eyes.
‘What have they done now?’ he said.
I looked around the garage, deciding how to say it. It was a big place, bigger than some people’s flats. There were boxes of acrylic paints, funny-shaped vases, classy-looking Christmas decorations made of ceramic, and then all of Luca’s things stuffed into storage boxes in the corner. They were shoved on top of each other, with big white labels that read ‘LUCA’.
Cora stood up.
‘Can I come?’ she asked.
‘No, you bloody well can’t,’ said Luca. ‘You remember what happened last time.’
She crossed her arms and stuck out her bottom lip. I could feel time weighing down on us, heavy as bricks. I had to say it. There was no way I could convince them both if I didn’t say it.
I looked Luca hard in the eyes.
‘They want to get you sectioned.’
The air froze again but quicker than before. Luca and Cora were covered in frost, bodies chilled in cubes of ‘TIME’. The thing is, for me time isn’t just a construct. It’s a physical thing: heavy, cold, tight and thin as candyfloss, depending on the occasion. But I couldn’t explain it to them then because I didn’t have the words.
Luca pulled out a snow globe from a box marked ‘ILLUSIONS’ and threw it on the floor. A piece of plastic chipped off the bottom but it didn’t smash. His whole face collapsed in on itself.
‘I knew I shouldn’t have come here,’ he said.
Cora shook her head.
‘They won’t do it,’ she said. ‘They promised they wouldn’t do it again.’
I looked down at the snow globe, glitter spinning so fast that you couldn’t see the landscape inside. When I looked back Luca was on one knee in front of Cora.
‘I’ve got to go,’ he said.
She shook her head, pigtails flapping back and forth.
‘No, no, no!’
He pushed her hair back
.
‘This isn’t your fault,’ he said. ‘I know you’ll think it is, but it isn’t.’
She searched Luca’s face for signs of deceit. Then she threw her arms around his neck.
‘No, no, n—’
She sank her head into his shoulder so you couldn’t hear the noes any more. It made me feel dented inside to see her that way. Somewhere in her future, sitting in her back garden or at the peak of Mount Fuji or in the doorway of a betting shop, she’d remember this moment and realize how it changed her for the rest of her life. I just hoped it would change her for the better.
‘I hate them,’ she said.
Luca wiped away her tears.
‘It’s not their fault either. Not really.’
‘But you said—’
Luca put his hands in the air.
‘You can’t trust me. I’m mental.’
They were both quiet for a bit then began chuckling in the way that Jules and me do when we’ve got the giggles.
They rested their foreheads together. Then Luca’s eyes sparked up.
‘Do you know where Dad’s car keys are?’
Cora’s nose crinkled; then she nodded and ran into the house.
Luca stood up, shifting about on his feet as he tried not to look at me.
‘It’s not really stealing …’ he said. ‘I mean, they’re my parents, for God’s sake.’
I shrugged.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
His brows rose then fell again. He looked at the rucksacks at my feet.
‘What about Jules?’
I smiled. You could tell he was reluctant to ask because it showed he cared.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘She’ll find us.’
I thought about Stu, how he said I wasn’t the right person for Luca. Then I thought about the medicine cabinet, full of pill bottles. I saw the trumpet case on the floor.
‘So, your granddad and Louis Armstrong …?’
Luca’s eyes lit up.
‘He taught him the trumpet,’ he said. ‘That is, Armstrong taught my granddad. He used to tell me all these stories. The places they went to and the people they played with. Wait a minute.’
He rummaged through his boxes until he found ‘JOY’. He pulled out a CD and waved it at me. Cora came hobbling back with Boy in her arms and a set of car keys hanging from her mouth. Luca took the keys as she passed Boy over to me.
‘I’ll distract them,’ she said.
She was gone before we could say anything. I looked at Luca.
‘Master criminal in the making,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
The BMW was still on the drive. It made a quick beep as Luca unlocked it, but when I reached the boot it was already cracked open. I didn’t mention this to Luca as I opened it wide for him to throw the bags in, yet it was still puzzling me as we slipped into the front seats. Then Boy began licking my face and I soon forgot about it.
I looked up at the big house: the sage-green sashes, the matching door. I don’t think Joyce meant to pull me in the way she had. She was no Wicked Witch, no Queen of Narnia tempting me with Turkish delight. But I’d been pulled in just the same. I thought her life was something special, something I could grab a piece of for myself. But it was just a hall of mirrors. I could never be one of them, and Luca couldn’t either, which was exactly the problem. He was like the palm tree in their conservatory, leaves pressed against the glass. He could grow in that climate sure enough but sooner or later his head was going to be pushed up against the roof, his shoulders forced out of joint because he just couldn’t fit in. He needed an open roof; he needed to breathe.
Luca put Louis Armstrong in the CD player. ‘What A Wonderful World’ flowed from the speakers.
‘Dad loves this car,’ he said, grinning. ‘He’s going to kill me.’
As Luca turned the key in the ignition I heard a growling coming from the back seat. We both turned to look.
‘For FuCK’s sake!’ yelled Jules, emerging from under a blanket. Her eyes were half open, a line of drool across her cheek. ‘What’s a girl gotta do to get some kiP?’
Boy began barking. Luca put his foot on the accelerator.
The Wonderful Town of Skegness
I wanted to go cold turkey from the heroin when I found out I was pregnant, but the midwife shook her head. She said it would ‘risk the development of the foetus and cause it to suffer withdrawal symptoms’. It felt like she’d slapped me when she said that. The bundle of cells inside me was already hooked on the hard stuff and it was no one’s fault but mine.
Rusby told me I could have an abortion. The bigger I got, the more he talked about it until I thought he’d force me down the clinic himself. But then he got caught burg-ling an old people’s home with an offensive weapon and was put in prison again.
I thought the methadone maintenance programme would be a short-term fix before I got completely clean. Then they took Izzy away, Rusby dumped me for that Slovakian girl and Jules went on a bender somewhere near Yorkshire. It wasn’t a good time to get off the methadone; life was too unstable. But then one day I saw Robin Hood and realized things had to change.
I’d been avoiding him since he’d told me about his daughter but that day I needed company. I must have been looking particularly rough because, when I got to the front of the sandwich queue, he took me to one side, placed two Caesar wraps in my palms and then rested his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
‘Take care of yourself, Molly,’ he said.
His grey eyes were kind and warm.
‘What for?’ I said.
I meant it. I didn’t know why I should take care of myself. Izzy had given me purpose; I hadn’t had any before her.
Robin Hood’s eyes turned steely. He squeezed tighter, so hard it made me grimace.
‘Because you’ll never do any good in the world with your head in the gutter.’
I could tell he was sorry as soon as he’d said it, but I turned and left before he could apologize.
I went to the hospital chapel that night. It’s warm and peaceful, open twenty-four hours though hardly anyone visits. Those few people who do are friendly; they nod and smile like you’re one of them. I never have the heart to tell them I’m not.
When I got to the chapel I walked past the main section to the Islamic prayer hall. It was past all the prayer times so the hall was empty. I covered my head with a woollen scarf, took my shoes off and walked along the back, looking down at the specially made carpet, little oblongs with fancy designs all pointing east. Then I knelt down on one of the designs and clasped my hands together.
Sometimes you need silence to gain clarity and, kneeling on the prayer mat, I realized that Robin Hood was right to be angry with me. I was wasting my life, failing to live up to my potential, failing to do the things his daughter could no longer do. I was letting him down.
And then I thought of my own daughter, that little purple bundle placed in my arms, eyes squeezed shut, mouth stretching wide as she cried and cried and cried. If I ever wanted to see her again, as flimsy as that possibility was, I needed to be clean. I needed to be straight. I needed to be worthy.
Jules said I’d become moral because I’d seen God. But it wasn’t God I saw in that prayer hall.
It was hope.
The signs were all pointing to Skegness. It would have been simple – roads long and straight, stretching through blankets of flat, grassy countryside – if it hadn’t been for Luca’s shoddy driving. Whenever we got stuck behind a lorry, he’d get rigid and panicky. Jules kept goading him to overtake, even when there was oncoming traffic, as Boy slept through it all on the back seat. Despite the power of the BMW Luca couldn’t find the balls to fully commit so we’d pull in and out of the lanes like a yo-yo, horns blasting and other drivers giving us the finger.
Luca took it well, laughing off each near-head-on collision and pretending to wipe the sweat from his brow. Since we’d left Bingham, the darkness had lifted, replaced by rays of sunshine so bright that near-d
eath couldn’t weaken them.
We eventually passed a sign saying ‘WELCOME TO SKEGNESS’ with a picture of a fat fisherman, pipe in his mouth, mulberry-red scarf whipping behind him as he skipped along a sandy beach with a wide grin on his face. I sat with my hands wedged between my thighs, filled with the kind of optimism that gushes up from the very base of your spine and bursts across your face. I clutched the pillbox containing Izzy’s hair between my legs. The metal was cold in my hands but I could feel it getting hotter, as if the hair inside was on fire.
Jules held a blanket to her chin as she sat slumped in the back seat. She’d guzzled rough whisky the night before and every time Luca swerved or bumped a kerb she’d clutch her stomach and yell out some obscenity. Even with the yelling it felt good having the team back together. It felt like we were back on track, that nothing could stop us now.
‘Nearly there!’ Luca announced.
The car swerved to the side as he bounced in his seat.
‘Calm down, Posh Boy,’ Jules said. Her hand was hanging out the window, a fag between her fingers. ‘You’re going to drive us into a ditch if you ain’t fucking careful.’
Luca looked over at me.
‘Nearly …’ he whispered.
I leant over to him.
‘… there!’ I whispered back.
Jules rolled her eyes in the rear-view mirror.
‘You’re both bonkers,’ she said.
I watched Jules stroking Boy’s head in the mirror. The dog’s eyes fluttered with each rub.
‘Your mum called, by the way,’ I said, light and breezy.
Jules jolted.
‘What did she have to say?’
‘Just wanted to know you were … well.’
‘Bloody hell!’ she said, scowling. ‘She gets a new hairdresser and she thinks she’s seen the light.’
Luca frowned and turned. The car swerved to the side.
‘Keep your eyes on the road, Posh Boy!’
I looked back at Jules, mouthing, Are you OK?
She gave a nod, before mouthing back, Thanks, doll. Then she gave me a wink.
How to Find Home Page 15
