Chapter 31
Thirty-one
I WOKE TO THE sound of my phone buzzing.
I sat up and felt down the side of the sofa cushions.
Jolly had left a voicemail. I rubbed my eyes, remembering then that he said he’d sleep in the car, that he didn’t like the way the house smelled, that it made his eyes sting, that he thought the fumes had gone to his head.
I remember the soft fur of his jaw when I kissed him goodnight, the cautious hug, stolen while Victoria was throwing up in the bathroom, and then watching him trudge outside, alone.
I massaged the pillow marks from my jaw and listened to the message.
‘Morning, Shan, and I guess happy New Year. Can you tell V that I’ve taken the car to look for food.
I know nowhere will be open, but I can at least try.
I need a fry-up. If I find somewhere, I’ll get bread, bacon, beans, sausage.
Let me know if there’s anything else you want.
Do you have oil in the house, or butter?
Oh, and tell V I’m using a twenty I found in the glove compartment.
She won’t mind. I mean, I hope she won’t.
Who knows, maybe I’m dead to her after last night. ’
He chuckled mirthlessly then cleared his throat. The indicator ticked.
‘OK, I’m going to try and find an offie. Is there somewhere nearby? Never mind, I’ll just drive around for a bit and see. There’s bound to be somewhere. Anyway, let me know if you want me to get anything. OK. Bye.’
I dug the sleep from my eyes and peered over the arm of the chair.
Victoria was asleep on the other sofa. Despite Jolly being the one who’d instigated last night’s row, I couldn’t help but blame her for how it had escalated.
I got up, tiptoeing my way through a maze of crisp packets, empty bottles and cellophane wrappers, and went through into the kitchen.
The windows were wet. I balled my sleeve and rubbed at a patch of condensation until the morning revealed itself, grey and overcast. Long lines of fog hovered above the landscape.
I filled the kettle and inspected the contents of the fridge.
Mum and Dad had emptied it a while back.
There was just one wrinkled spud of an orange and the mould-frosted remains of a sandwich I’d failed to finish two weeks earlier.
I heard Victoria stir from the other room. Two minutes later she padded through, draped in a blanket, her short hair stuck up on one side and a face like thunder. I felt a stab of resentment. The kettle whistled.
‘Morning,’ she muttered.
‘Happy New Year,’ I replied stiffly.
She squinted at me as the memory dawned. ‘Oh yeah.’ She picked two mugs from the drainer. ‘Where’s Jolly?’
I told her about the message. She leaned against the sideboard and stared at her fingernails.
‘I can call him back if you want. Is there anything you need?’ I dropped the teabags into the mugs and lifted the kettle from the stove.
She shrugged. ‘Not really.’
So this is how it’s going to be. ‘I’m sure he feels bad about last night.’
Victoria flicked a granule of sugar from the counter onto the floor.
‘It’s not like him to talk like that,’ I added.
‘It’s fine.’ She cracked a bone in her knuckle. ‘I don’t care.’
‘You know, that’s probably why he’s gone out so early, to try and say sorry.’
Victoria shrugged again.
‘He should be back soon. We’ll wait for him and then he’ll apologize, and you guys can make up,’ I said, hoping I was correct. I didn’t think I could handle another second of Victoria’s wounded self-importance.
I stirred the teas and slid the sugar bowl towards her, but she was staring out of the window, her eyes vacant, glazed over. She yawned, and I caught the acrid whiff of vomit on her breath. Her gaze fell on me. ‘No. Let’s go for a walk.’
‘What, now?’ I asked peevishly, spooning the teabags into the bin. ‘No, V, let’s wait for Jolly to get back, he won’t be long and—’
‘No. I want to go now. I don’t want to see him yet.’
My stomach gurgled. ‘But V,’ I said, trying to dampen the irritation in my voice, to sound reasonable, ‘I’m sure he’s really sorry. And he’ll have food.’
‘He said shit about you too, Shannon.’
‘Well, not really . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Come on, V . . .’
But she ignored me and slipped out into the hall.
I bit my fist, released it. I picked up my tea.
It was Grandma’s favourite mug: chipped, familiar, a satirical line drawing of Neil Kinnock printed on the side.
I took a sip, but the tea was murky and pond-like.
I made a mental note to get Dad to check the pipes.
I went to the fridge, a Pavlovian tic. No milk.
I was about to pick up my phone and text Jolly to ask for some, when I heard rustling coming from the hall. Victoria appeared, holding two coats.
‘Here,’ she said, handing me a yellow rain mac and slipping her arm inside a blue one. ‘We won’t go far.’
WE WORE THE COATS over our pyjamas. The air was damp, muggy, far too warm for the time of year.
I wished I’d had time to shower. After just a few minutes of trying to keep up with Victoria, I could already feel the residual warmth of last night and my current exertions coupling in sticky synchronicity, the sweat along my lower back, my top lip, the base of my neck.
Victoria clambered over a half-rotted kissing gate. She was going the long way, the wrong way. I stopped and demanded she slow down, but my words flew away from me, lost on the breeze. Victoria walked on, oblivious, her head bowed to the wind.
We continued like that, her leading, me following, for maybe thirty minutes. Finally, Victoria reached the scar and came to a stop. I made a last mad scramble and came alongside her. ‘Why didn’t you wait for me?’ I asked between gasps, bending forward and gripping the tops of my thighs.
‘I couldn’t hear you,’ she replied flatly.
When my breathing returned to normal, I lifted my head and took in the scene in front of me.
The valley spread out before us, venerable, industrious and solid.
I’d never really appreciated the beauty of where I grew up.
It was just a place, the place where I’d been born, where I went to school, where I shopped, where I passed by boarded storefronts and abandoned textile mills, curry houses and cash-and-carries, holding my mother’s hand, hiding behind her PVC coat-tails; then it was a place I saw through the lens of glass bottles late at night, from park benches or the fogged windows of a bus, watching, waiting, waiting for my chance to escape.
Since moving to London, though, the place sometimes had the ability to capture me unawares, to pull me into a dream and reveal itself as magical, strange and unique.
The sun emerged, bathing the morning in bright dew-dripped clarity.
In the distance, soot-blackened factories and pump towers slumbered in the mist, Gothic church spires punctured the sky, and terraced windows shone like mirrored ponds, diffracting their double-glazed light heavenward.
Home. Impossibly beautiful, painfully so.
A cloud passed over us, and the landscape was once again plunged into gloom.
I lowered my gaze. Below us was a steep gully eroded by time.
I scraped my heel along the edge. A loose clod of soil detached itself, falling and hitting a strangle of bare roots.
I peered over the ledge. The ground was orangey and wet but for some boulders directing the curves of a dribbling brook.
A gust of wind hit the back of my neck. I felt my knees buckle and my stomach lurch.
I stepped back from the edge. I was lightheaded.
A hangover squatted, dull and threatening behind my eyes.
Neither Victoria nor I had eaten a thing since last night, and I’d only managed two limey mouthfuls of burning tea before she was out of the door.
I crouched down on my haunches and stared at the grey stone beneath my sneakers.
My insides gurgled. I needed carbs, potato, something to stop up the acidic emptiness squirming inside me.
I didn’t want to walk back down the hill; I felt sure I couldn’t, that I’d collapse.
The dislocation of last night was still there.
Are you behind the glass, Shannon? I could feel myself floating.
No. I stared at the ground, blinking rapidly.
Maybe if I could just lie down, maybe then I could get my bearings, return to myself again.
I shut my eyes. Stars winked in the darkness.
‘Shannon?’
She was saying something.
‘Shannon?’
I glanced up and Victoria doubled before my eyes.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘What?’
‘I said, when were you going to tell me about Obi?’
The question hit me blunt and square in the chest. How long had she been sitting on that one?
And why now? Why the sudden desire for candid conversation?
Where had that been when I’d needed it? Where had that been in the days, weeks and months since Godwin?
I could hear a plane in the distance, the wind spiralling in my ears.
‘I didn’t know you knew,’ I managed.
‘I knew,’ she said. She gazed out across the valley. ‘I always knew that you liked him.’
Then why didn’t you say anything. ‘Oh.’ The plane was coming closer.
‘Obi was . . . he was . . .’ She searched for the word. ‘Good to me. He was kind.’
‘Yes.’ No, not a plane, a helicopter.
‘Sometimes, that’s all you need. Someone who’s nice to you.’
‘Yes.’ Spinning closer.
‘I hope he’s being nice to you.’
‘Yes.’ Rotary blades, slicing us both to ribbons. ‘He is,’ I replied.
‘Well’ – she paused – ‘that’s good then.’
The sound grew louder, tongues of steel chopping the air. I waited for the blow, but it never came. The helicopter, red and yellow, reared up then disappeared behind a cloud, its mechanical roar fading to a mosquito whine.
‘Shannon . . .’
I managed to stand up. I looked across at her and, from out of nowhere, she flashed me the most achingly pure smile I’d ever seen, one that seemed to light up her eyes, her face, the entire gloomy moor.
‘I’m really happy for you guys,’ she said. ‘You deserve good things, both of you.’ She scuffed the toe of her boot against the ground. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know. You’re my best friend, Shannon.’
The words echoed inside my head with gut-wrenching clarity.
B-e-s-t f-r-i-e-n-d.
And that’s all you’ll ever be.
I shut my eyes and felt the memories of that night hurtle through me.
You’ve never been with a girl before, have you?
A hand between my legs. This is what you want, isn’t it?
Stroking her cheek. Yes. The soft canvas of her skin.
I’ve wanted this. A grinning row of purple-stained teeth. I’ve wanted this so much.
I felt in that moment like an explorer, like someone who’d tramped the earth their entire life searching for a single rarefied creature, only to find that it had never existed in the first place, that it was all an illusion.
Victoria didn’t care about me beyond what I could provide her with.
I was an appendage, a tool. Victoria didn’t love me. Victoria had never loved me.
All I wanted then was for it to be over, to skewer my bright and brilliant friend with a nail, to stick her behind a frame or flatten her within the pages of a book, to conquer, silence and be done with her, and – please God – to move on with my life.
‘Shannon?’
‘What?’
‘Do you forgive me?’ she asked.
I frowned, exhausted by her. ‘For what?’
A cat-like smile. ‘I know I can be a bitch sometimes.’
‘No one thinks that.’
‘Jolly thinks that.’
‘He was drunk. He didn’t mean those things,’ I said, trying to conceal the irritation bubbling up inside me, the black tickertape behind my eyes.
‘He did,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I’ll be gone soon.’
My head hurt. My body hurt, my mind. What was she saying? What game were we playing now?
‘What do you mean?’ I managed.
‘I didn’t want to say anything after last night, but I got the part.’
‘What part?’
‘Jane Eyre. I had the recall before Christmas.’
‘You got the part?’
‘Yes. I won’t be returning to school.’
‘You got the part and you’re not coming back.’
She nodded.
I took a step towards her.
She got the part, and I’d helped her do it. I’d given her everything she ever needed so she could take everything I’d ever wanted.
‘Well done, V,’ I said softly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
She looked at me and squeaked a single word, her last line.
‘Don’t—’
—Her mouth gaped, locked open in surprise, no – that’s not it – in terror. Kind of ugly really, in the end. And then she was falling, her blue coat spread behind her like wings, limbs twisting, hands reaching, grasping, grasping for the bare root, the hold, the branch that wasn’t there.