Chapter 25
25
‘Stop freaking out. Don’t be an idiot. It’s just a little Christmas party.’
That’s what Martha had told her little brother Fin, as soon as their dad had gone out earlier.
‘But what if he comes back?’
‘He won’t.’
‘But how d’you know ?’
She exhaled, hoping she could trust him not to breathe a word about what was to happen tonight. Of course he wouldn’t. Fin would be part of it as – unfortunately – he lives here too. And much as she’d like to, Martha can’t exactly pack him off to a friend’s or stuff him into the cupboard under the stairs. So she’ll have to accept his annoying presence, and that of his equally annoying friends, and hope that everyone she’s invited will turn up. That way, Fin’s little group will be so diluted as to be barely noticeable.
‘Marth?’ Fin prompts her now.
‘What?’
‘It’s just… Dad. He said the thing he’s gone to, it might be boring…’
‘It won’t be boring,’ she snaps, and he frowns, looking hurt.
‘Yeah, but?—’
‘Fin, listen to me,’ Martha says, adopting a level tone now. ‘I know Dad’s not coming back tonight ’cause he’s taken an overnight bag.’
‘Has he?’ Fin’s eyes widen.
‘Yeah. So we’re fine,’ she states, strutting away from him now and heading for her room, because she can’t be around her little brother any more. Not right now anyway. Not after seeing that thing in their dad’s bag. Because actually, she wants to tell Fin, to offload it instead of carrying it around in her head like a bomb that could go off at any moment. Equally, she can’t tell him, because what if she’s got it wrong and has misinterpreted the gift tag and the actual gift? Then he’d be freaking out over nothing and it would all be her fault.
It’s actually pretty stressful, she decides, being the one in charge. Holding the fort , as her dad put it.
Martha necks a vodka shot and studies her face in the mirror. Almost instantly, she feels a little better. She feels better still once she’s showered and changed and done her make-up and hair. And her mood continues to improve as she and Fin perform a speedy inventory of the living room, carrying any easily breakable items up to their dad’s studio where they’ll be safe.
Friends start to arrive, lugging rucksacks filled with beer and wine and various spirits. And now music is playing and Martha’s heart lifts as she opens the door to see Izzy, with whom she’s in love. They hug and kiss and Martha pulls her into the living room where the table is already covered in cans and bottles and puddles of spilt drink.
Time’s a weird thing, Martha reflects briefly as Izzy grabs her hand and they start to dance. This day, with her dad fussing and pacing, seemed to stretch for a hundred years. But now the party’s under way, and in a blink it’s midnight. Fin and his friends are all crammed onto the sofa, laughing and drinking enthusiastically, a blur of troubled complexions flushed with the headiness of the party. Pablo, who Martha dated briefly, is smoking a spliff in the middle of the living room. Martha wonders for a second whether the smell will linger until morning. So what if it does? They can open the windows; and anyway, her dad won’t care because he bought a gold bracelet for someone who’s not Mum, and he wrote on the gift card: Just a little something for you, beautiful. So fuck him, Martha decides.
That’s why she’s not overly concerned when a bottle of red wine spills onto the floor, bleeding all over the beige rug, or when a group of unfamiliar young men saunter in without knocking. ‘All right!’ Pablo says in greeting. There’s some laughing and jostling, which signals to Martha that it’s okay, they’re friends of Pablo’s. The fact that Pablo steals car parts to order doesn’t concern her. There are no cars in here!
Now the music has changed and is deafening and thumping insistently. Martha panics briefly that the neighbours will hear and might complain to her dad – but it’s too late to do anything about that now. And what’s he going to do anyway? Ground her? Martha necks another shot, accepts a drag on a joint and allows herself a moment’s pleasure that the night is going so well. People are kissing now, in the living room and kitchen, on the stairs and in all of the bedrooms.
The night goes on, and yet more people arrive – to think Martha had worried that no one would turn up! And kitchen cupboards are ransacked, packets of crisps and biscuits torn open. Someone delves into the freezer and starts eating cookie dough ice cream from the tub. Someone else stumbles downstairs to roars of laughter. They’ve been rifling through a wardrobe upstairs and found these hilarious trousers, like old raver’s trousers – yellow with squiggly patterns – and they’ve put them on.
‘Look at these! These are fantastic!’ an unfamiliar boy announces, affecting a raver’s dance in the hallway.
Fin’s friends have surged into the kitchen now, hunter gatherers in search of more alcohol. They have downed all the beers they’d managed to purloin from their own homes and no one will give them anything else. When Fin tried to swipe a bottle of rum, Pablo slapped him on the back of the head.
‘Look!’ Ajay, aged fourteen but looking around ten, waves the slender bottle he’s found in a cupboard. Red wine vinegar.
‘Don’t drink that!’ someone shouts. But in his drunkenness the only word Ajay sees is ‘wine’, and he yanks off the screw top and flings it over his shoulder, into the face of a powerfully built young man drinking vodka from a World’s Best Dad mug. Ajay brings the bottle to his mouth and glugs down the vinegar, a rare vintage with a powerful acidic kick.
The instant he’s finished, his guts clench and he needs the bathroom urgently. He pushes through all the milling people to get to the downstairs loo. But it’s locked. He bangs on the door – a girl yells at him – and then stumbles upstairs, ignoring cries of ‘Hey!’ and ‘Ow!’ as he tramples on feet and legs and some girl’s long blonde hair.
Although Ajay has been to Fin’s house before, he doesn’t know which room is the upstairs bathroom. Not this one, obviously. This is definitely a bedroom – it’s actually Fin’s parents’ bedroom – the clue being that there isn’t a loo in it but a bed , a bed that two people are currently having vigorous sex on. Ajay spins out of the room and clatters up some more stairs, his stomach cramping as he bursts into a room filled with more people and computers, like it’s an office or something. In the split second before anyone registers his presence, he sees that there’s weird art on the walls. Not pictures – just massive writing. FREE YOUR SOUL, one reads.
Ajay doesn’t want to free his soul. He wants to find the bathroom as his stomach is heaving and gurgling in an alarming manner. But he doesn’t feel he can ask, as the people in here – all older boys, maybe about nineteen? – are telling him to get the fuck out, what are you doing up here you stupid kid? He gawps at them, wondering what’s going on in here, what they’re doing. Then, amidst their jeers and laughter, Ajay does as he’s been told. He gets out.
Martha, who is still dancing with Izzy, knows nothing of the activities in her parents’ bedroom and her dad’s study. They kiss, and she’s so happy she barely registers the cry as someone falls heavily into the lopsided Christmas tree. Down it crashes, tinsel flying and Martha’s great grandmother’s baubles shattering as it cracks the window and collapses onto the wine-sodden rug.