29

Dear World, I spend the rest of the evening sending frantic texts to Joe and to my mother, and neither of them get back to me. Later on, up in my room, I am dozing in and out of restless sleep, when I suddenly sit bolt upright in my bed, tangled in my duvet and sweating profusely.  My door has opened a creak, and there is a shadow peering in.  “Lou, are you asleep?”  It is my mother.  I throw back the duvet and leap out of bed, running to the door to tear it open.  Joe is standing just behind her.  He looks awful.  He is trying not to cry.  “Joe is going to stay with us for a few days,” my mum informs me in hushed tones.  “Until everything settles down again at home.  Can you make him up a bed on the floor if I grab the blankets?”

“Course,” I say.  I grab his arm and pull him in.  I have never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life.  My mum gives us a sort of withering, concerned look before hurrying off to get blankets from the airing cupboard.  Joe hovers in the middle of my room.  I want to throw my arms around him, but I don’t want my mum to catch me, so I don’t.  I just stare at him.  He is wearing the same Radiohead t-shirt he had on days ago, with a checked shirt on top.  Most of the buttons are undone, except for two in the middle.  The cuffs are undone as well.  There are mud and grass stains on the knees of his jeans, and a smear of dirt under his chin.  He folds his arms around himself and shivers, and stares at the floor.  He looks thoroughly beaten and disgusted with himself.  I search for the anger and the pride he had that morning he got into my bed with me, but can see no trace of it.  I look at his face as my mum goes back and forth dumping piles of blankets inside the door.  His bottom lip is cut and swollen, and there is another thin trail of blood coming from his ear.

Finally my mother stops fussing, and stands in the doorway releasing a massive sigh.  “I hope you two understand how much trust I am putting in you by letting you stay in here,” she tells us sternly and we nod at her.  “I am putting trust in you when neither of you has done anything lately to deserve it.”

I want to tell her we are just bloody friends, and can everyone stop assuming that we want to get into each other’s knickers constantly, but I bite my tongue and just look at her apologetically.  “Things are too tense at home for Joe to stay there,” mum looks at me and says.  I wonder if I can detect something in her eyes.  Something she is trying to tell me.  She does not take her eyes off of me.  “So I intervened and brought him here.  Putting my friendship with Lorraine at risk in the process,” she adds angrily, as if this is somehow our fault.  I just nod again.

“Okay mum.”

She finally turns to go.  “Get some sleep,” she sighs.  “We’ll all talk in the morning.”

When the door is closed, I look at Joe.  “Sit down,” I tell him, nodding at my bed.  “I’ll make these up for you.”  He moves slowly, unsurely and sits on the edge of my bed, while I wrestle with the blankets on the floor.  “Are you okay?” I look up and ask him gently.  “Why are you bleeding?”

“Had a fight,” he croaks, staring at nothing.  “Me and Mick.”

“While my mum was there?”

“Yeah,” he nods.  “She stopped him.”

“Jesus Christ Joe.  What the hell happened tonight? I had a little visit from your brothers, once my mum had shot off to your house!”

“Oh.  What did they say?  I haven’t seen them yet.”

I stop making the bed up and frown at him.  “You haven’t seen them?  So much for them sorting things out for you!  That was what they said!  They made me promise to keep my mouth shut while they sorted things.  Fucking shitting scumbag liars.”

Joe says nothing.  He is sitting on the bed with his hands hanging limply between his knees.  He looks like he is maybe in shock or something, but how would I know?  I shuffle forward on my knees until I am right in front of him.  He is just breathing very fast.  He looks so pale.  His eyes are full of tears, and as I pick up one of his hands and hold it gently between mine, the tears line up and fall one by one.  I watch them skidding down his white cheeks, over his cheekbones, and down to his chin.  “What happened?” I ask him.  He sniffs loudly.

“Don’t know.  Police suddenly appeared when I was up on the bridge with the bloke.  They must have followed me.  They must have seen me before!”

My eyes grow huge.  “What?”

“Was so scary,” he whispers.  I hold his hand tighter and rub it between mine.

“Oh, Joe. How much did you have on you?”

“Just one of them little bags Leon makes up.  Twenty quid’s worth.”

“Shit. This is bad.”

He lifts his other hand and wipes the tears away, but fresh ones line up to take their place almost instantly.  He nods miserably.  “Was so horrible Lou,” he whispers croakily.  “They put handcuffs on me and everything.  I was so scared.”

“Oh fuckinghell mate.  What’s going to happen?”

“Got to go to court,” he shrugs and sniffs again.  “They questioned me for ages.  Wanted to know who I was running for.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t say?”

Joe just stares at me for a long, torturous moment.  Then he drops his head into both of his hands and I watch his shoulders shake as he sobs into them.  He shakes his head at me.  I get up and sit next to him on the bed and slide my arm around his trembling shoulders.  “Oh Joe,” I murmur, resting my head against his other shoulder for a moment.  “You idiot.  You are such an idiot.  Why didn’t you say?  You have to say.  You can’t take the rap for them, you just can’t!”

“I need to talk to them first,” he sobs.

“But why?  I told you what they said already.” I lift my head to stare at him.  I keep rubbing his other shoulder with my hand, pressing his body into mine.  “They said it was okay for you to take the rap, because they’ve both got previous and they’d get sent down, but you won’t.  That’s what they think Joe.  They’re quite happy to let you take all the blame.”

“I won’t go to jail will I?” he asks suddenly, turning his tear stained face to mine.  I swallow and fight the urge I have to wipe his tears away with my thumb.

“God knows Joe!  How would we know? I have no idea!  Did they get you a solicitor or something?”

He nods, frowning in confusion.  “The duty one.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I can’t remember…” Joe covers his face with his hands again.  I hug him close.

“What happened with your mum and Mick?”  I ask quietly.  I feel his entire body shudder next to mine then.  I feel the tremor of pain and shock and disgust twist right through him as he relives the memory.

“Just…” he shakes his head very slowly, staring through his fingers.  “Just…really…fucking mental.”

“Well my mum must have thought so, to bring you back here.”

“They packed all my stuff,” he says through his fingers.  His voice sounds hollow, shocked to the core, devoid of emotion or belief.  “They packed it all up and chucked it out the door.”

“Oh my god! Joe!”  I put both my arms around him now. I wrap them right around and hold him so tight while he shudders and sobs.  I kiss the top of his head, and then the side of his face, and I taste his salty tears, as he must have tasted mine that night in his bed.  “Joe, oh Joe.  The bastards.  All of them.  Fuck them!  They don’t deserve you Joe.  They never have.  You can just live here with us then.  Mum will adopt you.  They don’t deserve you!”  I keep my arms around him and rock with him back and forth.  “Don’t you worry,” I tell him, and plant another firm kiss on the side of his head.  “Everything will be okay.  We’ll tell the truth Joe, that’s what we have to do.  We have to tell my mum the truth, about everything.  Fuck Leon and Travis.  Let them get arrested.  It’s their bloody mess.”

“I don’t know,” he murmurs then, lowering his hands and sniffing loudly.

“In the morning,” I tell him.  “Sleep on it.  You can’t take the rap for them Joe, you just can’t.”

“Why not?” he asks, looking into my eyes and lifting his shoulders in a tired shrug.  “I don’t even care.  I won’t have anything to do with any of them after this.  But I won’t be a grass.”

“Oh Joe, no.”

He gets up then and rolls his head on his neck, then shakes out his arms and legs.  His jeans are getting too small I notice then.  Creeping up his ankles.  He drops down and gathers the blankets around him.  He looks exhausted.  He looks broken.  I want to kill them all.  I want to steal his perfect goodness away from them, and make it mine, keep it all for me.  They never saw it, never nurtured it.  They don’t deserve him.  That is all I keep thinking.  They don’t deserve him.  He is a good apple among a rotting bunch of fetid cancerous bad ones.  I watch him crawl in among the blankets, and I watch the sobs that still shake him as he tries to control himself.  Finally he lays his head on the pillow and stares nakedly up at me.  I want to cry.

“Thanks Lou,” he says hoarsely.

“I hope you got a few good ones in with Mick,” I reply with raised eyebrows.  He does not even smile.  He just closes his eyes.  I get back under my covers and let him go.  I seem to lie there for ages, just listening to him breathing.

At some point during what is left of the night, I hear him crying silently under his blankets, and I just cannot bear it.  I get out of bed and slip in beside him.  I pull his head into my chest and stroke his hair, and rub his back, while he just lets it all out.  Neither of us speaks.

In the morning, I untangle myself from Joe and get to my feet.  He just sleeps on.  I look at my bedroom door, slightly panicked, while memories of the last time we were caught together in bed career through my mind.  I lean down and cover him up and sneak quietly out of the room.  I know that my mother is going to be in the kitchen, sat at the table with her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea, and a tea towel lying on her lap, or maybe on the table next to her cup.  I know that she is going to look at me in that way, the way she always does lately.  Like she does not recognise me anymore.  I know that she is going to want to know what I know.  I know that Joe will not grass his brothers up, but I have not yet decided if I will or not.

I creep in, feeling sheepish and young.  She just looks at me, and I can’t decide if it is disappointment or pity that I see the most etched on her face.  Maybe a good deal of both?  I slip into a chair at the table.  “Joe’s still asleep,” I say, not looking at her.  She drums her fingers gently against the teacup.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“Yes please.”

“Egg and soldiers?  Used to be your favourite once.  When you were a little girl.”  There is a note of terrible sadness in her voice that I can barely stand.  I force myself to look at her long enough to smile and nod in recognition, but that is all I can manage.  She slides out from the table and puts a small saucepan of water onto the hob to boil.

“How long can he stay?” I ask her back.  I watch her sigh.

“As long as he needs to, I suppose,” she replies.  “I’m just going to have to be careful not to get involved, if you know what I mean.  Not take sides.”

I am not sure what she means.  “Sides?”

“Yes.  His side or theirs, I mean.”

I still don’t know what she means.  I watch her turn the grill on, and slap a slice of wholemeal bread under it.  “Mum, what happened at their house?  I mean, why did you bring Joe back?”

She turns to face me, and folds her arms across her breasts. “Look,” she says slowly, and I can tell that she is thinking in her head, trying to work out the best way to say something.  “I don’t know what all this drug dealing business is about.  I didn’t ask Joe, and I don’t plan to right now.  I only know he has always been a lovely, decent boy, and I can only suppose the older two have roped him into something unsavoury?”  There is an undeniable question mark at the end of her sentence, but I pretend not to pick up on it, and just stare up at her expectantly.  “Anyway,” she goes on.  “That’s none of my business, because at the end of the day it’s for the police and the courts to decide what’s gone on.  But I cannot justify, or make excuses for the way I saw….” She breaks off now, swallows, coughs, and then turns her back to check the toast and the boiling water.

“Saw?” I question, prompting her.

“The way I saw the adults in that house treat him last night,” she finishes, and on the last word I hear her voice crack, and I see her lift one hand and drag it across her eyes.  I watch her trying to compose herself.

“You mean, like the stuff I tried to tell you?”

“I suppose so yes.  They just totally lost control.  They were wild.  Like animals.  I kept telling them to calm down, calm down, leave it till the morning, let him go to bed, that sort of thing.  They packed up all his stuff from his room and started throwing it out of the door.”

“They’ve got vicious tempers,” I say morosely.  Mum shakes back her hair and stands over the hob, watching my egg as it bounces around it the pan.

“Well, I just didn’t like what I saw,” she says.  “And I know Lorraine is my friend.  My very old friend.  And she has always been tough on her boys.  Lord knows, the older two needed it, but Joe…” she trails off again, shaking her head slightly, as if she just can’t fathom any of it.  “He was just so pale, and frightened and so sorry, he was so sorry.  He just kept saying sorry, sorry, over and over.  They wouldn’t even let him speak.  I found myself stood in front of him Lou.  I had to shield him.  I had to get him out of there.”

“You did the right thing mum,” I say then, and get up from the table.  “They don’t deserve him.  I know he’s in trouble, but it really isn’t all his fault you know.”

“Well if you know anything Lou….” She turns and looks me in the eye.

“I need to speak to Joe.”

“Then I have to trust you’ll do the right thing,” she says, her eyes burning into mine.  I feel such a wave of compassion and gratitude for her then, that it actually overwhelms me.  I sort of stumble into her arms, and slide mine around her body, and end up with my face pushed up against her breasts.

“I’ll do the right thing,” I tell her.  “Because you did.  Thanks mum.”

I feel her playing with my hair, like she used to do when I was small.  She wraps it around her fingers, and then unwinds it again.  She presses her head down onto mine and breathes in.  “You kids,” I hear her mumble. “It still takes my breath away you know, when I see how quickly you’ve grown. You know what parenthood is Lou?  It’s not enough time.  Not enough time to hold your children near.”  She kisses me twice on the head. “One minute it’s all changing nappies, and rocking you to sleep, and holding your little hand, and then, in a blink of an eye….”

I squeeze her tight.  In my head, I can just see her at Joe’s house, scared and confused, standing in front of him, trying to tell Mick to calm down.  I squeeze her again.  “I love you mum,” I say.  “I love you so much.”

27

Dear World, well it would seem that you never really know anyone that well, do you?  They don’t know me, and I don’t know them.  He can fuck off.  He has the nerve to shout at me and make me feel bad!  I am not the one dealing drugs for my brother.  I am just trying to be a decent human being, who does not run away from things the whole time.  How easy would it have been to avoid Marianne and refuse to see or speak to her again?  How easy it would be to vilify her and fear her, and bitch about her to the Stick Insects.  Harder to listen to her, to try to understand her, to try to be a friend.  Fucking Joe, I think, I rage as I head home alone, wobbling all over the pavement at one point and shouting at myself inwardly, for fucks sake walk straight, you are not that drunk!

It’s not the drink, my nagging little friend in my brain tells me smugly.  It’s the lack of food.  You used to be able to drink way more than that and still walk straight!

Yeah, so fucking what?  Who bloody cares?  Not me.

Why am I so angry with him?  Why am I so angry?

I realise how relieved I had been to hear him say the deliveries were over, that he had stood up for himself and said no for once.  I had felt so proud of him.  His courage, his nerve, had forced me out of my bed.  That was it.  I had done it for him.  I had started to feel like a miserable self-pitying puke lying there like that, when he had bigger stuff to deal with.  Oh Joe, I think desperately, why did you cave in again?  Because it’s not just one more time, and we both know that surely?  One more time leads to one more time.  One more time leads to a lifetime of being Leon’s errand boy, Leon’s scapegoat.  One more time leads to other favours, other crimes, can’t he see that?  Is that what he wants?  To be like them?  I kick at the dead grass on our front lawn.  Damn it!

Why do people let you down so much, I wonder?  One minute you feel so proud of them, so inspired by them, and the next minute they reveal their true weakness in spectacular style.  They just crumble.  I am thinking of mum and Les, and dad and his shitty sneaky little life, and me.  Me.

Me.  Christ, I am letting everyone down every day, and here I go again.  I start to feel incredibly nauseous as I approach the front door.  My headache has accelerated into a mind spin of pain.  I gag, then swallow, gag then swallow.  I watch my own hand reach out for the doorknob.  I feel the metal in my grip, and then I am falling forward, I am tumbling in, I am sinking down.  What a shock.

I come around to my mum panicking like a madwoman.  She is practically slapping my face, trying to wake me up.  When she sees my eyes open, she looks visibly relieved and starts to try to pull me in through the door, so that she can close it.  I can manage a crawl, to help her, but my head feels like play dough and every movement is a little kids fists pummelling and twisting it.  I wonder where Les is.  I hope he didn’t see me go down.

“Jesus Christ!  Jesus Christ that is it!” my mother is shrieking at me.  She manages to get my feet past the door, shoves them up towards my arse, and then finally slams the door shut.  I guess she didn’t want to let the neighbours see me like that.  Fair enough.  “What the hell is wrong with you, as if I don’t know?” she continues to squawk, as I heave myself into a sitting position in the hallway, with my back against the wall.

“Why are you asking if you already know?” I wonder out loud.  She looks apoplectic now.  She kneels next to me, hands splayed on her denim skirt, cheeks flushed with rage, and eyes brimming with tears.

“Don’t you dare start being cheeky!” she cries at me.  “You’ve been out drinking haven’t you?  Look at the state of you.  Right that is it, I warned you.  I am not wasting another second of my breath trying to get through to you.” She stands up abruptly and heads for the table in the hall, where the phone is.  I watch her angrily snatch it up and start to dial.

“Mum they won’t be open now,” I say quietly from the floor.  She slams the phone back down and kicks the wall.  “Mum calm down.  I’m okay.”

“I’m phoning the doctor first thing in the morning!” she turns on me, waving a finger my way.  “I am not taking no for an answer!  I will drag you there if I have to!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I tell her, and climb slowly to my feet.  “I’ll go.  I’ve had enough of my head hurting anyway.”

This seems to both surprise and placate her.  She still looks like she would like to kill me, so I head for the stairs, and she does not try to stop me.  “I’ll go to bed,” I say meekly over my shoulder.  I feel like such an idiot, if I am honest.

“First thing in the morning,” she repeats to me.  “I’ll knock on your door.  I mean it Lou.  I cannot cope with this worry any more.”

“I said fine,” I say, and go into my room and close the door.  I hit the bed and don’t get any time to think about any of it.  I am asleep within seconds.

As promised mum wakes me up and hauls me to the doctors the next morning.  We walk there in silence, and we occupy the waiting room in silence.  I try to busy myself with a magazine, but they only seem to cater for the very young, (toddler bricks and baby books) or the very old (fishing and home makeover magazines.)  I give up and just sit and wait with my hands in my lap, trying not to look at my mum.  When my name is called, I go in alone, though I have a horrible feeling that my mother has already briefed the doctor.  She has that sympathetic yet patronising sort of smile ready for me.  The sort that says oh silly little you, what have you been doing to yourself eh?  I find myself slumped in a blue plastic chair, waiting to be grilled.

Doctor Fielding is plump and grey-haired and has been my doctor since I was born.  I almost expect her to say ‘my haven’t you grown?’ when she opens her mouth, but instead she looks over her glasses at me with concern.  “Now then Louise, your mum tells me she is very worried about you.  She says you’ve been on a diet, is that right?”

“Yes,” I nod at her politely.  She has that elder lady quality about her.  She also sounds rather posh, and I am tempted to call her maam or something.

“So how much weight do you think you have lost?”

“I think it’s about two stone,” I say with a guilty shrug.  I can’t help it.  She is peering at me over her glasses; she is making me feel like I have done something wrong.

“Shall we get you on the scales and see what you weigh now then?” she asks brightly, speaking to me as if I am five.

“Okay.”

She nods over to the big weighing scales parked next to the door.  I slip off my shoes and climb on.  I feel awful.  I feel so small and stupid and childlike.  Doctor Fielding has a look, writes a note and then motions for me to stand against the door where there is a chart to measure height.  Again, she makes a note and then nods for me to return to my chair.   “Okay,” she says breezily, glancing down at her notes, before reaching for her keyboard and tapping out a few keys.  “At five foot two, we would expect you to weigh somewhere in the region of seven stone, eleven pounds and nine stone, eleven pounds, and be healthy.”

“I was about ten and a half stone once!” I say quickly, and she looks at me with a patient smile.

“Well, you weigh seven stone two today Louise.  And that is too low.”  She gives me that smile again.  The one she presented when she called me from the waiting room.  She looks sympathetic and patronising at the same time.

“Oh,” I say.

“Your mum is right to be concerned.  That is not enough for your height, or your age.  Don’t forget you may still have more growing to do!”

“Oh.”

“Yes, and losing weight by cutting calories and increasing exercise is all very fine, but you have to be sensible about it.  Do you eat breakfast?”

“Yes.”  This is a half lie.  I eat breakfast sometimes.

“What do you normally have?”

“Apples,” I shrug, gazing around the room and wondering how much longer she is going to keep me here.  “Yoghurts, that kind of thing.”

She is looking at her computer screen.  “And what about lunch?”

“Um, I don’t know…just whatever.  Toast or something.”  I shrug again.

“Your mum seems to think you are skipping meals a lot, is that true?”

Ah here we go, I think.  Now she’s getting to it.  Now she’s going to stop skirting around the issue.  I think carefully for a moment as she looks back at me, one hand paused above the keyboard, and the other in her lap.  I wonder whether I ought to lie, and see if she buys it.  What can she do?  Get out a lie detector or something?  How does she know what I do or don’t eat?  How does anyone?  I also wonder if I should tell her the truth, and see what she does with that.  I am curious.  So I nod at her hesitantly and she instantly frowns at me.  “You seem like a smart young lady,” she says.  “You must know skipping meals is not a healthy thing to do.”  I just shrug at her.  I don’t know what else she expects me to say.  She starts rifling through a bunch of leaflets she has already on her desk.

“Can I have something for my headaches?” I ask her then.  I don’t want anyone to forget about my headaches.

“You’re getting headaches and passing out because you are not consuming enough calories, Louise,” she tells me rather sharply, and fixes me with a disapproving glare.  “You don’t need anything prescribed for your headaches.  You just need to eat three sensible, healthy meals a day.”

“Oh,” I say, and look at my hands.

“Are you worried about putting on weight?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Louise, I want you to take these leaflets and these diet sheets with you.  They document what a young girl your age should be consuming in terms of calories, and nutrition.  You do realise that if you continue the way you are, your periods may stop?  Your hair may fall out?  You may have to stay in hospital?”

I just stare at her in confusion and feel tears threatening to come.  Hospital?  I know she is probably trying to scare me, but for fucks sake!  I swallow, and try to hold myself together in front of her.  I feel angry with her then.  How dare she try to freak me out and scare me?

“You need to put on at least nine pounds for me to be less worried,” she goes on, and she is not even looking at me now, she is looking at the screen and typing again.  “So I am going to leave those with you, and make an appointment for you to come back in two weeks, so we can see how you are getting on.  How does that sound to you?”

I stare at her.  I want to say that sounds fucking horrible you mean old witch.  That sounds like fucking torture!  That sounds like I have no fucking choice and makes me want to kick you in the eye!  I scrape back my chair and stand up nodding, so that she doesn’t see the tears in my eyes.  They are tears of rage, I swear to you World.  She pokes the leaflets at me so I take them.  She scribbles on an appointment card and gives me that as well.  “You are not unlike a lot of other young girls I see in here,” Doctor Fielding sees fit to tell me then.  “We understand the pressures to lose weight, and look a certain way.  But there is healthy, and there is dangerous, and I am afraid you are heading for the dangerous side Louise.  I don’t want to see you get thinner and thinner and end up in hospital.  You don’t really want that to happen either do you?”  I shake my head.  I cannot speak.  “It’s a slippery road, you see,” she goes on. “You know I am talking about anorexia, don’t you?  This is how it starts.  People try to lose weight, and when they do they get hooked on it.  They can’t stop.  Eventually they are not even in control anymore, the disease is.  I don’t need to tell you it’s a killer, do I?”  I shake my head again, staring desperately at the door.  “Can you send your mum in please?” she asks me.  “I need to talk to her as well.  I am going to suggest you arrange to see a counsellor as well.”

“What?”

“A counsellor.  Eating problems are not simply physical problems Louise.  They are emotional, and psychological ones.  A counsellor or therapist can help you understand why you feel the need to starve yourself.”

I am staring at her open-mouthed.  I am gawping at her.  “Because I was fat!” I try to tell her, panicking.  “That’s why I started it!  I won’t do it anymore.  I’ll put nine pounds on, I will!”

“Louise, it is very worrying to see how quickly you have lost this much weight,” she says this from her chair, her plump hands folded neatly on her lap. “I am concerned that you have already slipped quite far into a possible eating disorder.”

I am outraged. I am gob smacked.  “Seriously?”

“Yes,” she nods twice.  “I am very serious.  Now send in your mother for me please.”

I don’t have any other choice.  I have to go back into the waiting room and tell my mum it’s her turn.  She just barges past me with this tight look on her face.  She makes me feel like I have done all of this on purpose just to wind her up, just to give her some more grey hairs, or something.  I sit back down and twist my hands together in my lap, and think about running out and running off, hiding somewhere, disappearing.  There is a little kid on the floor, a little boy playing with the bricks.  He is banging on brick on top of another, again and again and again.  His mother is watching him with quiet adoration, and gives me a wet smile when I look up and glare at her.  I feel like saying, you would have got a clip round the ear for that in your day.  But I don’t.  I get up and walk outside and wait for my mum.

When she comes out, she is by no means impressed.  I was right about feeling she is angry with me about all of this.  It is as if she thinks I have led myself down this road deliberately to hurt her, to make her worry.  “She thinks you have an eating disorder,” she snaps this at me as we start to walk home.  She is walking fast in her little black-heeled shoes.  I am trying to keep up, clutching the stupid leaflets in one hand.

“She didn’t say that,” I attempt to correct her.  “She said possible.  Like borderline.”

“That’s not what she said to me!”

“Oh.”

I think I don’t want to have this conversation with you.  I don’t want you anywhere near me in fact.  “She’s going to arrange a counsellor,” she goes on, and I feel my chest tighten involuntarily.  I want to scream.  “She thinks you need to talk to someone about your weight loss issues.”

“I don’t have weight loss issues!” I yell at her.

She wipes a tear from her eye.  I don’t care.  “She says you are very underweight for your height.”

“I know!  I know all that!  She wants nine pounds!  She can have bloody nine pounds!”  I am aware I am shouting and waving my hands about, but I can’t seem to stop.  “I’ll give her bloody nine pounds!” I shout.  “When we get in, just you wait, I’ll show you!  How much crap have you got in there?  Crisps?  Chocolate?  Doughnuts?  Give them to me; I’ll eat them all!  I’ll get her bloody nine pounds in no time!”

“Lou, please….”

“I’ll even round it up!  I’ll make it ten pounds!”

“Lou, listen to me, stop that shouting, you have to realise how serious this is, how worried we all are! We are just trying to do what is best for you!”

“Don’t worry,” I sneer at her.  I hate her.  “Don’t you worry mum, I don’t want you to worry so I’ll eat all that shit and put on bloody ten fat pounds all right?  I’ll do better than that if it makes you happy!  I’ll stop jogging and I’ll sit in front of the TV all day and do nothing but eat!  I’ll get really fat again!  Fat as a whale!  How would you all like that then?  You would all love that, wouldn’t you?  None of you cared when I was a big fat pig did you?  None of you worried then!”

I run off.  I run off before I can see her tears or hear her whimper of a voice, or listen to another word she can say.  I run off because all of it is true.  They are right, and I am right.  I run off.  I just keep running.

26

Dear World, we end up walking to the park.  The fucking park.  I look at it with a kind of hate and scorn I have never viewed it with before.  How many hours of my life have I spent in this park?  We sit up on the hill, just as I did with Joe earlier, and Marianne gets her stuff out of her bag and spreads it all out on the grass and proceeds to roll us a joint.  I lie on my stomach, chew a stem of crispy grass, and stare out at the park, and the fields beyond.  I think, look at this here, this is my entire life!  This is it, right here.  This park, and this field, and school, and the fucking walk over the bridge to get there, and the town, and the bus ride in, and the quay and the tourists, and the ducks and the swans, and the Priory church, and a terraced house, and noisy neighbours, and the parade of shops, and everyone knowing who you are and where you live, and the men’s club, and the car parks and the alley ways and the Provident loan lady and the Avon lady calling, and the Christmas hampers that take all year to pay for.  This is it.  This is all of it.  I feel my shoulders shaking with strange laughter.  Marianne looks and me and smiles as she rolls the joint.

“You okay?”

“I’m just looking at this fucking place, that’s all.”

“Looking, and thinking what?”

“I don’t know.  Thinking what the fuck? Is this all there is to life?  Do you ever think that?”

“I always think that,” she grins, finishing the joint and packing her tin back into her bag.  She sticks the smoke between her teeth, finds a lighter and flicks up the flame.  “And I have a nice big house and rich parents.”

“Oh yeah.  And you still think that?”

“I think that even more.  It’s all pointless.  It all means nothing really.  I look at my parents, rushing around, full of stress, knocking back coffee and vodka and wine, on the phone all the fucking time, fucking business suits and brief cases!” Marianne lifts her chin and grimaces at the sky.  “Grrrrr!” she growls, and then looks at me and laughs.  I smile.  “Honestly!  They kill me.  On a daily basis.  I swear, every single time they speak I want to puke.”

“Oh Marianne, they can’t be that bad,” I laugh at her.  “They seem lovely!”

“Lovely!  Who wants to be lovely?”

“Not you obviously!”

“Fuck no.”  She passes me the joint and lies down on her belly next to me, kicking her shoes off, and waving her feet back and forth.  “No one should.  Who would aspire to be lovely?”

“Did Leon think you were lovely?” I ask with a giggle.  Marianne nudges me sharply with her spike of an elbow.  “What?”

“Oh how did I know you were going to ask me that soon enough?”

“Well you wanted to come here and talk lady.  I was quite happy minding my own business.”

“How’s your head now?”

I pass the joint back to her and grimace.  “Not good.  Come on then.  Tell me what it was like with Leon.  Now we are both sober.  Tell me everything!”

Marianne giggles and looks down shyly, and plucks a stem of grass between her thumb and finger.  “It was nice,” she says, smiling.  “It was very nice.  He certainly knew what he was doing.”

“I bet he did.  I hope you were safe by the way.  I hear he gets around!”

“Of course we were safe,” she groans at me.  “I’m not an idiot.”

“Did you talk much?” I wonder.  “He’s never been much of a talker.”

“I talked a lot!” she laughs, puffing smoke out in front of her.  “You know me.  I didn’t shut up!  He listened though.  He seemed to really listen.”  She takes another long drag of the joint and hands it to me.  She looks down for a moment, playing with the grass with her fingers, stroking the stems back and forth, and then she raises her glittering green eyes to me.  “It might surprise you to hear, that he was actually incredibly gentle and loving.”  She nods and grins at my widening eyes.  “It’s true!  He was really lovely Lou. Really gentle and considerate.  He didn’t even rush off after or anything.  We laid in bed and talked for about an hour.”

I am shaking my head slowly from side to side.  “Un-fucking-believable.” I think to myself, if there were two words I would never in a million years associate with Leon Lawrenson, it would be those two.  Gentle and considerate. Unbelievable.

“Well it’s true.  I wouldn’t lie.  I would tell you if he was a complete shit, believe me.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

“No,” she answers too quickly, and that gives it away.  I feel sorry for her then.  I look away and smoke the joint, and feel my head getting fuzzier and fluffier, and the feeling spreads down through my body, lifting me up slightly, removing me from the reality of it all.  I feel woozy and light-headed, and slightly sick, but my head is feeling better.  “I don’t expect to.  You don’t sleep with someone at a party like that and ever hear from them again, do you?”  I don’t answer her because how the fuck would I know? “No,” she answers for me.  “I expect I’ll bump into him again at some point, and that’s fine.  I am cool with it.  Does it surprise you to know he’s not the total arsehole you always thought he was?”

I laugh out loud and pass back the joint.  “He’s still an arsehole as far as I’m concerned!  Well, actually, now that you mention it, he did kind of do one good thing for Joe for a change.”

Marianne looks interested.  “What was that?”

“Just stood up for him at home.  Him and Travis.  Joe and Mick got in a fight, and they came and backed him up.  Don’t think they’ve ever done that before.”

“Wow,” she says, looking both intrigued and surprised.  “That’s really nice!  And speaking of Travis, that brings me to my question for you!  Are you hoping to see him again?”

I just groan and moan and drop my face into my arms.  My head is then too heavy and fucked to lift back up again, so I stay like that for ages, just mumbling and moaning to myself, while she shakes and laughs beside me, and I am left wondering how I could have feared seeing her again so much, because I am actually enjoying myself, I am actually enjoying her company.  She stubs out the joint and digs around in her bag again.  She pulls out a bag of haribo sweets and opens them, and places them between us.  “Best thing ever for munchies,” she remarks, plucking one out.  I just roll my eyes and then close them again before I am tempted.

“It’s all right for you,” I tell her.  “You can eat whatever crap you like and you never put on weight.  It’s so not fair.”

“These are pretty low in calories,” she assures me, taking another.  I just shake my head and grab my water bottle instead.  “So you’re still at it then?”

“Dieting?”

“Yeah, and running.  You’re looking increasingly stick like Lou.”

“Is that a compliment or what?”

“You look great,” she grins.  “But you should still allow yourself the odd treat.  A couple of sweets won’t do anything!”

I shake my bottle of water at her and unscrew the lid.  I drink a few mouthfuls then screw the lid back on and chuck it in the grass before me.  I drop my head back onto my arms and realise that I desperately want to sleep.  “You’re not passing out on me or anything, are you?” she prods me and asks.  I moan.

“Nah.”

“I thought we could talk for a while?”

“Talk then.”

And so she does.  Marianne talks about her night with Leon, and how she had instigated the whole thing, starting with the coy flirting I had witnessed before they vanished.  She talks about him tracing his finger along her scars, without asking what they were or how she got them.  She talks about how she spent the entire next day cleaning and tidying the house, and how her lovely parents never suspected a thing.  She talks about having another party soon, and she talks about how she thinks Joe does not like her and never has.

Before I know it I am being prodded awake by urgent jabbing fingers, and I climb groggily out of pot-induced sleep. But thankfully my headache has subsided considerably.  I look up at Marianne, who is kneeling down beside me and looking slightly anxious.  “Sorry,” I mutter at her.  “Didn’t mean to fall asleep.  Don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.”

“It’s Joe,” she whispers.

“Huh?”

“Joe.  Coming across the field with his dog.”

“Oh! Shit.”  I look across the field and sure enough, there he is, striding quickly towards us, with Rozzer running and darting around him, and a carrier bag swinging from one hand.  He is walking fast and he does not look happy.  “It can’t be seven o’clock?” I ask in amazement.

“It’s twenty past,” Marianne replies.  “Oh please don’t let him kick off with me again.”  I am surprised that she cares.  She can hold her own in an argument and we all know it.

“Oh Christ, I bet my mum is having a fit,” I groan, rubbing at my eyes, and then at my head.  “We had this massive row before I came out.”

Marianne does not answer.  Instead she packs up her things and slings her bag onto her shoulder.  I cannot really believe that she is worried about what Joe will say to her.  Since when has she ever cared what people think of her?  “Are you off?” I ask her.  She nods.  Joe is upon us and does not smile at either of us.

“Hi,” I call out weakly.  He climbs the hill and stops in front of us and folds his arms across his t-shirt.

“Your mum is going mental,” he informs me tightly.  I grimace.

“Sorry Joe.  Fell asleep here.  Just woke up!” I smile at him uselessly.  Marianne climbs to her feet and flicks back her hair.

“I’m off,” she says brightly, looking down at me.  “Better not be late home.”

Joe looks at her darkly but does not say anything to her.  He drops his carrier bag onto the grass and a bottle of cider rolls out.  Marianne looks at it, and then at me, before shrugging her shoulders and starting to walk away.  “See you later Lou.  Joe.”

“Bye Marianne.  Thanks.”

Joe says nothing.  He waits until she has walked away, back across the field towards where you cut through to her house, and the drops down beside me, still with his arms crossed tightly.  “Joe,” I start to say softly, as I can feel the resentment and anger coming from him in rolling waves.

“What the fuck are you doing here with her?” he snarls at me then.  I blink in surprise.  I think, the last time I saw him this angry was at Hogan’s party, when he attacked Travis.  I blow my breath out slowly.

“Joe,” I say again, meaning to explain how I just bumped into her by accident, and everything is okay, and everything is smoothed out.

“You come here with her!” he says, sounding and looking like he would like to punch me in the face.  I am finding it hard to look at him.  “That fucking mad bitch!  What did you come here with her for?  Come to sit here and carve yourselves up together or something?” I look up at his face in stunned silence.  I cannot believe he has just said that!

“Joe!”

“Well, what then?” he yells.  “What are you doing here with her?”

“I bumped into her by accident!” I yell back and I sit up.  My head starts to pound a little again.  I glare back at him, as he is glaring at me.  “I had a row with mum and stormed out of home, and just bumped into her!  What are you so mad about?”

“I’m mad because she is a fucking little bitch! I’m mad because you said if and when you spoke to her, you would do it fucking sober!” He runs his eyes over me and lifts his top lip in disgust.  “And you obviously aren’t!  And I’m mad because you were meant to be meeting me!  Instead I get your mother all crying and stuff, wanting to know where the hell you are!”  He unfolds his arms and rakes one hand back through his hair.  “Jesus Christ Carling! What the fuck is your problem at the moment?  You used to be normal!”

“No I didn’t,” I shake my head at him. Now I want to punch his face in.  “What the hell is your problem?  You knew I wanted to speak to her, and I have!  We got stoned, not drunk, and if you want to know the truth, it’s done me a lot of good!”

“Did she explain why she cut you then? Eh?”

“It’s not like that,” I press my hands against my face in exasperation.  “I didn’t want to really go into that.  Look we were both hammered that night, Joe!  People do stupid things when they are that drunk, you know that.  She was really worried about me actually, about our friendship.”

“Yeah, right, bollocks!”

“What do you think she is, dangerous or something?  For God’s sake Joe, you don’t own me, I can be friends with who I like, and to be honest I don’t exactly have that many fucking options!”

He is shaking his head, his lips pressed tightly together.  He tears his angry gaze away from me, and snatches the bottle of cider up from the ground.  He lifts it, showing it to me.  “Want some?” he sneers.  “Because this morning you wanted to get drunk with me, remember?  So you could talk and stuff.”

“I still do.”

“Can’t believe you’ve been up here with her,” he mutters this to himself, as he unscrews the lid from the cider, and the orange bubbles rise up and froths out over his hand.  He swears and shakes it off, then lifts the bottle to his mouth and drinks.  I watch him, not knowing what to say or do to calm him down.  His face is flushed.  His eyes are narrowed.  He lowers the bottle, burps and drags his hand across his mouth.  “I don’t trust her,” he says then.  “I don’t trust people like that!  She knows what she’s doing Lou.  You just can’t see it!”

“What is she doing then?  You tell me.”  I take the bottle as he holds it out to me and drink from it slowly.

“She’s manipulating you all the time,” he says.  “You even said yourself you don’t know if she’s your friend or your enemy!   Remember?  She’s sneaky and sly, and she should not have done that to you that night!  For fucks sake!”  He snatches the cider back and drinks more.

“Just calm down,” I try to tell him.  “You don’t need to worry about me so much, you know.  I’m a big girl!  And I’m not an idiot.  I can figure Marianne out for myself.  Maybe I’ll always keep her at a safe distance, you know?  Either way, it’s nice to have female friends.”

“Nice?” Joe practically explodes at me, cider dribbling down his chin.  “Nice to have female friends who try to get you self-harming, or whatever the fuck you call it?  When you already have enough fucking issues?  Yeah, that’s really nice Carling.  Really, really nice of her.  She’s a fucking angel!”

I look down and say nothing.  I think anything I try to say will just come out wrong and enrage him more.  I wait for him to pass the bottle back and take a few more mouthfuls.  I wonder vaguely what my mum will think now.  Christ.  I just seem to keep making things worse.  I just seem to fuck up every single day I exist in.  We pass the cider back and forth between us silently for what seems like ages.  During this time, Joe does not look at me once.  He stares at the ground, like he is in a trance, and just feels with his fingers for the cider bottle before raising it to his lips.  Then he stares up at the sky, and at the field, and the hedgerows where we can see Rozzer having a shit.  I wonder why he can’t look at me.  I wonder what the hell is going through his head.  I start to feel really drunk and giddy and stoned.  I remember uselessly that I didn’t eat all my salad, and start to wish Marianne had left her sweets behind for us.

It seems a wise idea to lie down again, so I do, this time on my back with my arms folded behind my head.  “I’m sorry Lou,” I hear Joe say eventually, and I smile at him when he lies down beside me.  He is still clutching the bottle of cider, but there is not much left.

“It’s okay, you idiot,” I tell him.  “You had a right to be angry.  I was meant to meet you.”

“You fell asleep.”

“And I’m sorry.  I’m sorry you had to deal with my mum.”

I watch him drop a hand over his face and leave it there.  I look at him sideways and can just make out the creases of skin around his eyes, where he has screwed them up tightly.  “What’s wrong?” I ask him then.  “You’re not just angry about Marianne are you?”

He snorts in reply.  “What are you, a mind-reader?”

“No, just your best friend who has known you since you were in the womb.  I can tell when something is up.  What is it?”

“Fucking…” he starts and then trails off, still with his hand over his eyes.  I wait for him to find the words he needs.  “Just…..fucking Leon.  That’s it.”

“What now?”

“You know.”

“I think I know.  You mean deliveries?”

Joe nods under his hand.  “He won’t take no for an answer.”

“Well he has to.  You want out.  He can’t make you.”

“I kind of agreed to one more.”

I roll onto my side and stare at him.  “Joe!”

“I know, I know.  Fucking idiot right?”

“Yes, fucking idiot!  Why would you do that?  Remember what you were saying this morning?”

“You have no idea how persuasive he can be,” Joe mumbles, refusing to look at me.  I watch his chest rising and falling under his t-shirt.  It has ridden up where it is too small for him now, and I can see a slice of his bare stomach.  I watch it go in and out as he breathes under his hands.

“Joe,” I say to him.  “Don’t do it.  You don’t want to do it.”

“I’ve said it now.  Can’t back out.”

“Course you can!  What’s wrong with you?  You don’t have to do it.  Why did you let him talk you into it?”  I want to smack him I am so cross. I also want to hug him, I am so confused.  What has happened to him since this morning for fuck’s sake?

“Oh,” Joe lets out a moan, drops his hands away and rolls onto his side to face me.  He grimaces in anticipation for how disgusted I am going to be with him.  “It’s not the money,” he says quickly, although this was not what I was thinking.  “It’s just hard to say no to him.  You know how he is.  Plus he reckons I owe him after he stuck up for me with Mick.”

“You are joking?” I ask in disbelief.  “He sticks up for you once, he does one nice thing for you and now you owe him?  More like he owes you!  Jesus Christ, he is one cheeky bastard.”

“It won’t hurt to do one last one,” Joe says with a pathetic shrug.

“That’s not the point Joe.  You said this morning you were done with it all.  You were different this morning!”

“I know, I know.”

“And then you have the nerve to storm up here and have a go at me for trying to sort things out with Marianne!” I roll away from him then, shaking my head as I stare up at the sky.  I am rather pissed, it has to be said.  I am brimming with anger and disappointment.  “I’m not coming with you,” I tell him rather spitefully.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“I don’t know what is wrong with you.  And you have a go at me!”

“Only because I care about you,” he says quietly.  I don’t look at him.  He sounds miserable and unsure.  “I didn’t mean to upset you.  I probably felt like a shit for letting Leon talk me into it, and took it out on you and Marianne.  Sorry.”

“You can say sorry as much as you like,” I snap, and suddenly force myself up from the ground.  I am too angry to be around him.  I think it is probably the alcohol and the state of my mind generally, but if he wants to let his bullyboy brother wreck his life and talk him into crime, then that is up to him.  I can’t be bothered anymore.  I feel his eyes on me as I brush the dried grass from my clothes.  “I’m going home.”

“I thought we were gonna’ talk?” he says, sitting up.  “You know, you wanted to get drunk and talk?  It was your idea!”

“Changed my mind,” I say and start to walk away.  “I’m going home to bed.  I feel like shit.”

“Lou!” he calls after me, but I don’t answer him and I don’t look back.