The Woman on the Pier

by B P Walter

  ‘Yes,’ I call back, ‘I just tripped.’ I stagger towards him. I’ve done something to my ankle during the fall and feel it protest as I put weight on it and reach his side of the road.

  ‘I’ve been trying to call you but I just get your voicemail,’ he says. He looks happy and worried at the same time, as if he’s not quite sure what’s going on but is quietly optimistic about where it might lead. ‘You should come in. My mum and brother are around, but they shouldn’t bother us.’

  I nod and allow myself to be led into the house. The scent is the first thing that hits me; a rather nauseating combination of cannabis and tobacco, mixed with something like burnt toast. I feel myself growing stressed immediately. The look of the place doesn’t help matters. The stairs, which are so close to the front door there’s barely a hallway at all, are coated in a stained, scuffed carpet. The banisters are laden with coats and hoodies and there are shoes – some of them football boots caked in mud – lining the short corridor towards what I presume is the kitchen. I glance into the doorway to my right and see a lounge with an average-size television and tatty-looking sofas.

  ‘Do you want to go and sit down in there and I’ll get you some water?’ Michael says. ‘Then we can go up to my room?’

  I nod again and go in, letting myself fall onto the nearest sofa. It’s more comfortable than I expected and I feel the pain in my ankle ease a little. Michael goes into the kitchen, which turns out to connect to the lounge as an open-plan affair, and I hear the chink of glasses and the tap going.

  ‘Here,’ he says, ‘have a drink of this.’

  The water does me good – I can feel the fog in my head lifting slightly as I drink, and I’m surprised by how earnestly he is looking at me. This whole thing has rather caught me off guard. His caring, attentive side would be rather sweet to witness if he were any other teenage boy. But I can’t let myself be thrown off course this time.

  ‘I can get you a plaster for your wrist,’ he says. ‘Let’s go upstairs to my bedroom. There should be some in the bathroom up there.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, setting the water down on the only bit of space on the coffee table. The rest of it is covered with old issues of gossip magazines and cigarettes. I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I walked into this place but now I see it, it all feels horribly inevitable. I’ve spent my life quietly wondering if I’m a snob, like my parents – parents who used to act like they were better than everyone else simply because of the car they drove or the newspapers they read or the ridiculously huge house they owned. My mother used to look down her nose at other people’s jobs and hobbies, even though she didn’t work herself, and make comments about my friends’ ‘uncultured music tastes’ or tatty clothes. Even our wealthy neighbours didn’t escape the firing line, with our jet-ski-owning neighbour – a charming young man named Bernard – being branded as ‘common’ due to his ‘uncouth pursuits’ or ‘irresponsible wasting of money’. All this from a woman who spent untold amounts of money collecting rare children’s toys. Now, looking at the Kelley household and feeling my discomfort and revulsion all too keenly, I wonder if I’ve absorbed more of my mother’s views than I realised.

  The upstairs of the house feels even more cramped and untidy than the downstairs. There’s stuff everywhere – boxes of junk obscuring walkways. Some of them clearly contain clothes, others stacks of CDs. I even spot two stereo players that are obviously beyond repair stacked on top of each other outside of the bathroom. Why the hell don’t they just throw this stuff away? It’s like they’ve just moved in, or were in the process of moving house or having a big clear-out but stopped halfway.

  ‘Turns out we don’t have any plasters,’ Michael says, coming back out from the bathroom. ‘Er… I’m sorry. You can use this though.’ He’s got a clump of tissues in his hands. I take them, ignoring my concern about the cleanliness of the whole situation, and dab at the blood on my wrist. The scratch is long, but not deep and the bleeding is already stopping.

  I follow him into his bedroom and he closes the door. It’s quite small, though not as packed with stuff as I would have thought. In fact, compared to the rest of the house, it’s borderline minimalist. Just a bed, a chest of drawers, a desk, and what looks like an old office chair, and a little pile of video game magazines in the corner.

  ‘You don’t have a window,’ I say, looking round. ‘I wouldn’t cope without a window.’

  He shrugs. ‘Not much to see around here anyway. It’s not like I’m on the seafront, like you in that hotel of yours.’

  ‘It’s not my hotel,’ I say.

  He laughs. ‘Yeah, of course, you know what I mean…’

  He’s been sitting on the bed, but now he gets up and starts pulling at his gym top. I feel myself go tense. Not this again!

  ‘I… think I made myself clear before…’

  I feel my breath constricting, not out of fear of what he might do, but more the emotional mountain I’m already struggling to climb.

  ‘It’s drenched. I’m just getting a dry one,’ he says.

  As he rifles around his room for a new T-shirt, I put my hand in my pocket and grip Jessica’s phone. Then I straighten up and walk towards him. ‘I need to talk to you…’ The world moves a little. I’m worried I’m going to lose my balance. Now. Now is the time. I need to say something now. I pull out the phone, and prepare to tell him why I’m there, tell him who I really am. But the movement causes me to sway forward, and a wave of nausea crashes through me. ‘I’m going to be sick,’ I whisper.

  Panic flickers on his face, ‘Shit, you OK? Fuck, you’ve gone, like, grey.’

  ‘Bathroom,’ I murmur, and he says some instructions and points. I clatter through the doorway out onto the landing, fearing the vomit will surface before I get there.

  I only hear the sound of the shower after I open the door. It swings back to reveal the naked figure of a teenage boy, probably a year or two younger than Michael, standing in the bath, one leg oddly raised so that it’s resting on the edge of the tub. The water is pouring down him and he looks up in surprise. The sight roots me to the spot, the feeling of nausea still present but ebbing away, as if the sudden distraction has spared me from its strength. I’m about to say sorry and slam the door when I see a gush of red and realise what the boy’s doing. He’s got a razor blade in his hand and he’s cutting himself. The inside of his leg is red and sore and I see an angry-looking open wound along his inner thigh. Blood is trickling down his leg, carried by the spraying water, and I can’t help but gasp. He’s frozen in his strange act, and the two of us look each other in the eye.

  Eventually he speaks. ‘Close the door,’ he says. He doesn’t shout, he doesn’t ask who the hell I am, but says it so urgently and forcefully, I obey him instantly.

  I’m gasping for breath on the landing and Michael must have heard me as he comes out of his room, looking confused.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I say, trying to regain composure. ‘There’s… someone in the shower.’

  He relaxes. ‘Ah, sorry. My dick of a little brother. Utter psycho. Didn’t freak you out, did he?’

  I raise my hand to my head, feeling the scratch on my wrist sting as the skin stretches across it. I pat the pockets of my trousers with the other hand and feel the comforting bulk of the two iPhones, mine and Jessica’s, pressed up against the fabric. ‘Only a little. Let’s go back to your room.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to be sick?’

  I give my head a tiny shake and wipe my brow. ‘No… I think I’ll be fine. I need to talk to you about something.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Boy

  I first started using my brother’s Facebook page about two months after he stopped using it. He suddenly went off the whole idea of social media altogether, saying it was just for twats and how he couldn’t be bothered to pretend his life was any less shit than anyone else’s. Instead of deleting his profile, he just deleted the apps off his phone. He never really uses his laptop – a broken old thing
that Mum got off a friend – unless it’s for schoolwork, so as soon as his phone was cleared of Facebook, he was never bothered by that Messenger-app ping ever again.

  I used to have it, but deleted my account soon after joining. I don’t like people much, especially the other kids at school, so I couldn’t make myself very enthusiastic about a site that made it possible to connect with others. Until I discovered Jessica.

  We’d been talking on another web forum for some time, which then led to us talking on the forum’s phone app, Circle. But for some reason, it kept messing up on Jessica’s phone – she said she wouldn’t get my messages, and she asked to befriend me on Facebook instead. I told her I didn’t have it and she found it funny:

  Red Flag Number 1. Never trust a guy who’s not on Facebook.

  So I told her I’d use it, but only under my brother’s old account. That worried her at first (Are you sure he doesn’t use it?), but I assured her he honestly didn’t, and then changed all the passwords just to make sure. He was now effectively locked out of his own Facebook page and we were free to chat as much as we liked.

  It’s weird, me talking to you when you have a different name and a different boy as your profile pic.

  She said.

  I typed back:

  I can change it to something like just the sky or a cute dog if you prefer?

  She didn’t care that much.

  It’s fine, your brother’s kinda cute… Maybe I’ve picked the wrong Kelley sibling… ;)

  I knew she was joking, but it hit a bit of a sore spot. I’d always been conscious of the fact that Michael was notably more attractive than me. I’d mentioned this to one of my only friends at school, Annabelle. She’s gay, so I’m not sure she was the best judge, but she did make me feel a little better: ‘Evan, you’re so handsome, just not in the flashy, surfer-boy way that Michael is. You’re intelligent good-looking.’ I decided to take this as a compliment.

  Jessica and I chatted for ages. About pointless things, mostly, but sometimes we got onto heavy stuff. Jessica would talk to me about her problems and coming to terms with things in her life. She’d complain that her mum was useless, always looked grumpy and was a constant nag, and how her dad always treated her better, talking to her like an adult rather than a naughty child. Until she discovered her dad’s habit of shagging other men’s wives. I told her she was one up from me by just having two parents, full stop. My mum was useless at many things, too, but a different sort of useless than Jessica’s dad seemed to be. My mum was in a different league.

  I can’t believe she did that, Jessica wrote when I told her what my mother had done to me and my brother when we were very young. What she had let happen under her own roof and how – even though it went on for years, maybe earlier than I can remember – the authorities never knew, never investigated, never did anything but ask why we kept missing school and send letters when we didn’t attend. And then it stopped. Very suddenly and without any warning, all of it was over. Dad vanished. Disappeared forever. And we just carried on as if nothing had happened. I only have very vague memories of it, but I can sort of figure out what age I would have been – probably about six or seven.

  She must have known. Known all about it. How could she not have?

  Jessica was right, of course. She did know.

  I replied:

  Yeah, she knew But she just didn’t care. Or if she did, she just cared about the drugs more.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Mother

  May. Three months after the attack.

  I was going to do it. I really was. I was going to confront him with the phone and show him everything – all of Jessica’s messages – and then leave him, shocked, not knowing what had just happened. But seeing his brother crouching in the bathroom like that unsettled me and now, when I close the bedroom door, I stay still for a moment and he just stares at me.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he says, looking puzzled. He does puzzled well, I think. That kind of boyish confusion, as if someone’s just spoken a foreign language to him in a very quiet voice.

  ‘I need to show you something.’

  He nods. ‘Yeah, you said that. What?’

  I take a deep breath. ‘There’s a reason I knew your address. A reason I spoke to you on the seafront. A reason all of this is happening right now.’

  He keeps staring back, waiting.

  I pause, gathering my thoughts. Just as I’m about to continue, the door knocks me forward and I’m jolted towards Michael, almost falling onto the bed. A woman appears in the room. She looks a fright. Scraggly peroxide-blonde hair with more than an inch of roots showing, skin spotted with blemishes and a large cold-sore cracking around the side of her mouth. Her lips are dry and badly chapped, even though it’s summer, and whilst it doesn’t look like she’s wearing any make-up, the area around her eyes is deep and shadowy, making the rest of her look gaunt and ill. She’s dressed in a bright-pink tracksuit, speckled with stains of food and liquids of different shades. In one hand she’s clasping what I think at first is a roll-up cigarette then, smelling the smoke coming from it, I realise it’s probably something less legal.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ She more or less screams the words at me and I can’t help but flinch, pulling myself further back so that I can sit properly on Michael’s bed while this woman bears down upon me like a witch from a fairy tale.

  ‘Mum, get out!’ Michael shouts back at her now.

  ‘Holy fucking Christ,’ she exclaims as her eyes fall over her son, sitting there in just his boxer shorts. ‘Are you two shagging? Here, how old is she?’

  ‘Fuck off!’ he shouts again, his voice hitting my eardrum hard, and I move away from him now, caught between these two shrieking members of the Kelley family. I just want to go. Get back to my hotel room and burrow under my sheets. I shouldn’t have come here.

  ‘Jesus, I thought it was your brother who liked the MILFs. How old are ya?’

  I start as I realise she’s switched to talking to me.

  ‘Erm, I should go.’

  ‘Yes, you fucking well should. This isn’t a bleeding bed and fucking breakfast.’

  I scramble to get up and start grabbing around on the floor for my cardigan.

  ‘You are one vicious cunt,’ Michael shouts at his mother. ‘You do fucking nothing for me and Evan but still manage to butt in whenever we have a little bit of fun or look like we might actually enjoy something. We were only fucking talking, anyhow!’

  ‘Oh leave it out,’ his mum sneers back. She grabs the door and opens it wide, gesturing to me. ‘Here, out, now! Clear the fuck off.’

  I don’t wait to be told twice. I bolt out of the room and down the stairs, managing to get my arm tangled in my cardigan as I almost fall against the front door. I can hear Michael calling for me to stop but I keep going.

  I’m in the car and reversing out of my parking space within seconds and as I put my foot down on the accelerator and drive way too fast down the road, I see a glimpse of him running out of the house reflected in my wing mirror. He stands there in the rain, watching me drive away. I can’t take my eyes off him. He looks so pathetic, standing there in the rain like a lovesick loner in a teen movie.

  I’m not sure how I feel. About him, about any of it. It’s becoming too much to handle. One big, tangled mess.

  And then there’s a loud noise. And a lot of pain. And then darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Mother

  May. Three months after the attack.

  Someone’s asking for my name. It sounds like I’m back at school. The voice has that strange, patronising quality, as if I’m being told to introduce myself to the rest of the class.

  ‘Can you tell me your name?’

  Who is this woman and why does she want me to tell her my name? It’s none of her business. And then I feel someone rifling through my pockets and hear another voice:

  ‘Found her purse. Her name’s Caroline Byrne.’

  What th
e fuck’s some man doing with my purse? I need to get up. But I can’t. There’s a stabbing pain in my neck that runs all the way down my shoulder and into one of my arms.

  ‘Caroline, can you hear me? My name’s Jessica.’

  Jessica? It’s Jessica? She’s here? I think I say it out loud. ‘You’re here?’ I’m pleased I’ve managed to say it out loud, and I start to cry.

  ‘I’m a paramedic. You’ve been in a car accident. Are you able to open your eyes for me?’

  It’s not Jessica. Not my Jessica. I stop listening to her now. All I can think of is my Jessica. I see her face flutter before my eyes. I think she’s in Spain. It looks like one of our holidays. Maybe Majorca. In the villa. Haven’t been to that villa in years. I want to go back there now. Back to the villa and be with Jessica. I need to sleep.

  I wake up slowly, then in a big rush. At first there’s nothing, no sight, no sound, but I can feel I’m conscious. Then there’s a disorientating roar as sound fills my ears. People talking, machines bleeping. Movement. Wheels. The sounds of curtains. There are people near me. I can hear someone saying something that doesn’t quite fit: ‘I told her she should just book it off as annual leave and go, but you know what she’s like. Won’t give herself a moment of joy. The trouble is, she’s already blown him off before with that wedding reception thing and if she keeps doing it he’s just going to lose interest in her.’ The woman stops and another woman starts talking and I open my eyes to look at them. ‘You see, the trouble is, she’s just never willing to put herself first for once and…’