35

Coming Home

 

Dear World, I sleep and sleep, and for once they all just let me.  They all just leave me alone.  I sleep the rest of the day away, wake up mid-evening and stagger to the toilet, and then find myself back in bed, and sinking quickly back into yet more sleep.  I can sense my mother hovering anxiously on the sidelines, pausing in the doorway, sighing and catching her breath.  I know she must be worrying about meals, and what I have and have not eaten.  But she leaves me be.

When I finally wake up properly it is half way through the next day, and I arise from bed with a sense of panic drumming in my veins.  I get washed and dressed, and whip back the curtains to reveal the day outside.  Joe.  I am panicked about Joe.  What if something has happened?  What if something has changed, and I wasn’t there?  What if he is gone?  What if he left me and I missed it? Fuck! I hurry down the stairs, hoping my mum can give me a lift to the hospital, and wondering why the hell they didn’t wake me up sooner.

“It’s all right!” she tells me at once, as I fly into view.  She is drinking coffee at the table.  “There’s no change.  Joe is still the same.  I would have woken you if I needed to.  Don’t panic.”

I breathe out.  I wonder how scared I must have looked.  My mother smiles warmly at me. “I’ll take you as soon as you’ve had something to eat,” she reassures me. I sit down, nodding okay.  She gets up and starts to make me a sandwich.  I try to remember the last time I went for a run, and I can’t.  I start to feel a little creeping guilt crawling up from my belly.  I wonder if my waistband feels a little tighter.  A bizarre and twisted part of my mind tells me that when Joe wakes up, if he had wanted to kiss me before, he certainly wouldn’t now.  Travis must be wrong, I think.  Why would someone like Joe want to bother with someone as messed up as me?  He knows all about me, I remind myself rather viciously.  He knows what a mess I really am. I tell myself to shut the fuck up but I do not listen.  I play strange scenarios out in my mind.  Such as Joe opening his eyes dramatically, and finding me the only one there, me looking fresh faced and beautiful.  Ha! What the hell is wrong with me?  “Marianne is back home,” mum tells me, as she slides a plate with a ham sandwich on it under my nose.   I pick it up and take a bite.  She watches with her hands on her hips.  “Funny girl that one.  And I still can’t believe Leon was the one that saved her.”  She smiles at my widening eyes.  “Lorraine told me, of course.  News travels fast round here!  I think, to be honest, it’s made her feel better, that he did that.  She coming to terms with her son being some kind of monster, but now she can have some hope for him too.  I mean, if he did something like that?  Oh I don’t know.  I still can’t understand any of it.”

“Me neither.”

“The other thing is, he’s in custody now.”

I stare at her.  “What?  When?”

“Last night.  Apparently he just walked into the police station and handed himself in.”

I am speechless.  “What?”

“I know,” my mum nods in amazement.  “I can’t fathom it.  Just walked in.  Just gave himself up.”  She walks past me to get her shoes and bag.  “I don’t know what to make of any of it,” she adds brightly.

“Neither do I,” I tell her.

 

I walk with my mother into the hospital, which is now starting to feel like an old friend.  We know the way; we don’t have to ask for directions.  I walk along, listening to my mother complain about the smell of hospitals, but it is not the smell that I notice.  It is the heat.  You walk in and feel like peeling off a layer almost immediately, which I do, slipping off my cardigan and tying it around my waist.  My mum herds me along, one hand on my back.  “You know you were all born in here,” she tells me distractedly.  I do know.  She has told me this a hundred million times.  That is how she met Lorraine.  On the labour ward, with Sara and Leon.  Through fretting and chatting about new motherhood, they discovered they lived around from the corner from each other, and the rest, as they say, is history.

When we get to Intensive care, we have to buzz the button and wait to be let in.  “You’re quiet,” my mum says to me as I yawn.

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

It is Mick that lets us in.  He grabs my mum by the arm and pulls her through, and I immediately sense his urgency, and my heart hammers into action, and I break out into a horrible cold sweat.  “What is it?” my mum calls to him, as he starts to pull her down the corridor.

“Joe?” I cry out.

“Come on!” he yells at the two of us.  “Quickly!”

“Mum?”  I look at her for help.  I find her sleeve and cling onto it.  Mick rushes towards Joe’s door, just as Lorraine appears through it, blinking and shaking her head, and her face a picture of trailing tears and disbelief.

“Lorraine?” my mum seizes her.  Lorraine grips her arms.

“Go and see!” she says to me, before collapsing on my mum. I am so confused.  I cannot understand what is going on.  I am too afraid to move.  I look to Mick, and he nods at the door as he holds it open for me, and I force my feet to move, but they feel like concrete.  He gives me a gentle push, and I am in.  I am in the room.

Joe is still lying on the bed.  Joe is staring at me.

My body reacts violently to the shock and the relief.  I feel a massive shudder wringing through me, and my knees go weak.  I put out one hand and find the end of the bed and hold onto it.  He is staring back at me.  His hazel eyes are like slits through all the bruising and swelling, but I can still see them.  He does not have the mask or the tubes anymore.  He looks confused, and so pale, but he smiles at me really slowly.  “You motherfucking bastard!” I tell him, and burst into tears.

I hear them laughing outside the room.  I wonder if they have their faces pressed up to the glass.  I don’t care.  I fall into the plastic chair, I shove it forward and I snatch up his hand.  This time his fingers tighten on mine.  They feel weak and fragile, but they move, he moves them.  I squeeze them back and he winces.

“Ahh that hurts,” he says, and his voice is a hoarse whisper.

“You bastard,” I tell him again, shaking my head from side to side.

“Bitch,” he grins at me.

“How’s your head?”

“Numb.”

“Are you gonna’ be okay?  Are you brain damaged or anything?”

He snorts at me.  “You wish.”

“You were brain damaged to start with,” I say to him, as the relief floods through me, warm and tingling, making my limbs fizz with excitement and energy. I want to grab that feeling in my hand, snatch it up and shove it in a bottle somewhere to keep, because to me right then, that feeling is life.  Life. I hold his hand in mine, rubbing my thumb back and forth against his skin.  I just stare at him for a few moments.  I am smiling, and shaking, and I can’t take my eyes off his face, his eyes and his mouth.  “Where were you?” I say eventually.  “Do you remember anything?”

“Not really,” he croaks, moving his head a tiny bit.  “It’s all a blur.”

“I’ve been sat here talking to you for days.  Feels like years!”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry about retard?  Tosspot.  Dick brain!”

“Witch,” he grins at me, curling his fingers into mine.  “Fuckwit.  Reject.”

“You arsehole,” I tell him, laughing, wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my cardigan.  “I’ve never been so scared in my entire life.  Or so bored!”

“Sorry,” he says again, still smiling.  “So do I get a kiss or what?”

I frown at him.  I think I want to hit him.  I want to wrap my arms around him and check he is real.  Put my head against his heart and listen to it thumping.  “Kiss?  Are you insane?  Why would I want to kiss you?”

“Because you missed me, because I scared you, because it’s the last fucking chance I’m gonna get!” I laugh out loud.  I stand up and lean over him, as if threatening him.  Fuck, I think, I have missed him.  “You don’t deserve a kiss,” I tease him, coming closer.  His smile is huge in his swollen face.  “You look like the quasimodo or something,” I tell him.  “You look like you’re wearing a Halloween mask.”

“You can’t insult a man on his death bed, whore.”

“One kiss,” I tell him.  “And if your breath stinks, you’re for it!”

“Okay,” he grins, wriggling slightly under his blankets.  I laugh out loud again.  I feel like an idiot.  I feel so, so happy.  I wish again that I could grasp hold of this feeling that I have, I want to capture it and keep it, and be able to speak of it and explain it, because it is better and stronger than any other high there is.  It does not even have a name, I think.  Happy to be alive.  Happy to embrace life.  What the fuck? I don’t know!  I am sixteen remember, I don’t know anything! I stop thinking and I lean down and press my lips upon his.  I close my eyes.  My hair slips down and covers his face.  He kisses me back.  It feels like coming home.  It feels like a breath I have been waiting to take. I pull back and stare at him in triumph.

“About fucking time Carling,” he winks at me.  I sit back down, I feel kind of giddy and sick, but I can’t stop smiling.

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble just to get me to kiss you,” I tell him, jokingly.

“But it helps though.”

I look over my shoulder.  I see Mum and Lorraine and Mick all at the window, eyes on us, all of them smiling sickly.  I sigh and look back at Joe.  “We’re so gonna’ regret this,” I tell him.

And I laugh.

34

The End of Us

 

 

Dear World, how much more can I take?  I ask you. I walk back to Joe’s room, with my head spinning.  He is still lying there, doing nothing.  I sit down next to him and open my crisps and my lemonade.  I watch his face, as I eat.  It seems weird to think he is in there somewhere.  “Can you hear me?” I ask him.  The machines beep and whirr in reply.  I watch his chest rising and falling slowly, gently.  “You’re gonna’ have one hell of a headache when you wake up,” I tell him.  “I won’t envy you.”  I finish the crisps and chuck the empty packet into the bin in the corner.  I take a long sip of lemonade, and then wedge the can between my thighs, so that I can lean forward and hold his hand again.  I press my forehead down onto it.  “Oh why won’t you just fucking wake up?  It’s been long enough.  This is getting boring now, Joe.”  I look back up, willing him to move, or try to speak, or to open his eyes.  But he seems so totally shut down.  He is like a window with the curtains closed.  He is locked down, buried within.

“I’ll tell you something really interesting,” I say to him then.  “I’ll tell you what I just found out.  It’s a pretty good story actually.  You won’t believe it Joe.  This will make you sit up and listen!  Listen to this.  I went to see Marianne.  Just now.  She tried to slit her wrists probably around the same time you were flushing Leon’s stash.  It was Leon that found her!  I know.  Crazy right?  Totally fucking crazy.  He practically kills you, runs from the house covered in your blood, and drives to her house.  To her house.  It’s so ironic it’s unbelievable.”  I pick up my drink and take a few more sips.  I have this insane image of a blood soaked Leon zooming in his car to Marianne’s house.  He must have known her parents were out.  He must have run up to her room.  “Then he fucking saves her,” I tell Joe.  “He uses his t-shirt to stop the bleeding, can you actually fucking believe that?  He takes off his t-shirt, and wraps it around her wrists.  Jesus Christ, she better hope you don’t have any nasty diseases, because your blood’s probably in hers right now!”  I laugh a little, but the sound is awful and hollow in the empty room, so I stop quickly.  His hand is lying on top of mine, and I am stroking each of his long fingers with my other hand.  I wonder if I can drive him mad with soft tickling.  If that will work?  “So your brother who nearly killed you, is actually also a hero,” I murmur, feeling suddenly very sleepy.  “Who would have thought it possible?  Not me.  Maybe Marianne sees something else in him.  Maybe he sees more to her than we do.  Who knows?”  I shrug my shoulders.

My head feels heavy on my neck.  I rest it in one hand, and keep my other hand entwined with Joe’s.  “I think they all feel guilty as fuck,” I tell him.  “Mick couldn’t even make eye contact with me yesterday.  And your mum, your mum, well, I’ve never seen her like this.  It’s weird.  I’ve never seen her upset about anything before.  Not upset upset, I mean.  I’ve seen her angry upset plenty of times.  She feels bad you know.  She knows the drugs were Leon’s.  She knows she was unfair on you.  So now you’ve got to wake up see?  Wake up so you can see them all worried about you, all feeling guilty, even Travis.  They’re all ashamed.  They all want you to wake up so badly, so that they can say they are sorry.  So that everything can be okay.  So you’ve just got to wake up yeah, so you can enjoy it!  Imagine Joe, having them all at your feet!  We’ll have fun with it won’t we?”

I yawn widely and fold my arms on the bed, taking his hand with me, holding it to my face.  I close my eyes.  “If people like you die,” I whisper to his hand.  “Then I don’t want to be part of this world again.  I’ll go back to my bed, won’t I?”  I kiss his hand and fall asleep.

When I wake up, it is because I feel a cold hand on my shoulder.  I shudder into consciousness and look up.  Lorraine is standing there with Mick hovering behind her.  I look at them, blank and sleepy, but part of me already starts to think of unkind words I can fling at Mick.  “I’ll take over,” Lorraine says in hushed tones, her eyes moving from me to her son.  “The doctor says still no change.”

“I can stay longer,” I say, stretching out my limbs.

“No love,” she shakes her head at me.  She has not bothered piling up her hair, so she looks very odd.  She has her brass blonde waves all sat around her shoulders, framing her face.  It at once makes her look younger as well as older.  “You look done in, and your mum wants you back.  Did you visit your friend Marianne?”

“Yeah.”

“How was she?”

“She’s fine,” I say, scraping back the chair and standing up.  “Did you know it was Leon that found her and brought her here?”  I don’t know why I say this, it is not like I wish to help him, or make him look good, but I suppose I want her to know the whole story, the whole bizarre circle of it. I watch her forehead creasing in confusion.  She sort of pulls her face back into her neck, as if she does not believe me, as if this version of what Leon is capable of, does not tally up with hers.  She looks over her shoulder to frown at Mick, who stands hunched and silent near the door.

“He found her?  Well how did he find her?  What was he doing at her house?”

“They kind of hooked up recently,” I shrug, not sure how to put it politely.  Lorraine nods now, understanding better.

“He saved her?”

“He stopped the bleeding and drove her here.”

“Right after he nearly killed his brother?”

I shrug again under the glare of her outraged eyes.  “I guess so.”

“Well you think you know your kids,” Lorraine says with a sigh as she drops her handbag to the floor.  “But then you realise you don’t know them at all.  Not one little bit.  I had no idea he was capable of either of those things Lou Carling, did you?”

What a question!  I think I have been watching Leon from afar since I was a little kid, and I have never been able to figure him out.  When Joe and I were little we looked up to him and Travis, only because they were older and cooler, and we wanted to be like them, we wanted them to let us join in.  Eventually we realised they were mostly just mean to us, and there was no point.  Since then we had kept a certain polite distance from them.  Until recently.  Until they needed us.   “I don’t know,” I tell her uselessly.  “Has anyone found him yet?”

“Police are looking for him,” Mick speaks up then, his tone as gruff and snappy as ever.  I only give him the briefest of looks.

“When can I come back?” I ask Lorraine.

“This evening?” She reaches out and ruffles my hair.  It is an odd, clumsy gesture, as I am taller than her, and not a child, but she does it just like I am a little kid at knee height.  Her eyes remain on Joe.  I have an awful flashback of her slapping in him in his bedroom that morning, after catching us in his bed.  She sort of jolts, and bites her lip, and I wonder if she is having the same thoughts as me.  “Go on,” she says to me, taking my chair next to Joe.  “Go on home and get some rest.  We’ll call you if anything changes.  Mick will give you a lift.”

I look at him in distaste. “It’s okay I can walk.”

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” he says, and holds the door open for me.

 

We ride back to the estate in Mick’s car.  He drives like Leon, I notice.  Impatiently and aggressively, swerving around corners that he should take slower, and taking a long time to brake at traffic lights and junctions.  I feel close to shutting my eyes, so convinced I become that he will crash.  I sit nervously on the passenger seat, arms crossed, wondering whether to talk or not.  Mick smokes a cigarette as he drives, and swears loudly at people who annoy him, and people who drive too slowly.

“Have you looked for Leon?” I ask him tentatively; thinking at least one of us should try to be well mannered.  His eyes swing towards me briefly as he sucks on his cigarette and steers the car one handed.

“Nah,” he says. “Wouldn’t know where to start.  Travis has tried.”

“Oh.  Is Travis at home now by any chance?”

“Dunno,” Mick shrugs.

“I can get out there,” I say to him. “Easier for me to cut through past the shops than you drive around.”

“All right.”

That is as far as the conversation goes, and once more I am left with the burning question, what does Lorraine see in him?  What kind of conversations do they have, for God’s sake?  What is it about him?  I sit in silence until the car swings round the corner into their road.  Right away I can see Travis, sat on the front door step, smoking.  As Mick pulls up, Travis stubs out his smoke and flicks his hair out of his eyes.  Tommy is crawling around in the front garden, pushing plastic trucks through the long grass.  As Mick climbs out of the car, Tommy sees him, leaps up and runs to him.  Mick drops his cigarette, stamps on it and holds out his arms for Tommy.

I look behind at Travis and catch his eye, as Mick makes a big show of swinging Tommy around in a circle.  They go inside together, Mick planting one rough hand on Tommy’s small shoulder as he steers him through the door. He passes Travis, not saying a word to him, not even acknowledging him.  He is staring at me, and gets to his feet, settling his hands in his pockets as he approaches.  “How’s Joe?” he asks me, squinting in the sunlight, and shaking his hair out of his eyes again.

I stand in front of him on the path.  I feel sleepy and disorientated; as if I have been curled up inside a dark cave somewhere.  “The same,” I nod at him.

He nods at the ground.  “And your friend?  How’s she?”

“She’s fine.  She’ll probably be allowed home later.”

He lifts his eyes to meet mine.  “She really tried to top herself?”

“Looks like it yeah.  You know who saved her?”

“No, who?”

“Leon.”

I watch the confusion and disbelief flood his face just as it did his mothers.  He lifts his top lip and screws up his eyes.  “You what?”

“That’s where he went when he left here, you know when you…” He nods at me, remembering. “He went there and found her.  She says he stopped the bleeding and drove her to hospital.  Saved her life.”

We stand in the sunlight, while the information bounces around Travis’s mind.  I drop my shoulders and sit down on the step and he does the same.  I watch the way his long legs stretch out before him, as he crosses them at the ankles, leans back on the doorframe, and keeps his hands in his pockets.  I am reminded of Joe, every time I look at Travis, and it is hurting more than I knew was possible.

“Can’t fucking believe it,” he shakes his head and says.

“I know.”

Travis pulls his legs back in then, and leans forward, crossing his arms over his knees.  He looks sideways at me.  I can feel his bare elbow brushing my arm.  “I flushed the whole lot you know,” he whispers to me.

“I know, you said.  All of it?”

“Yeah.  All of it.  Before we went to the hospital.  I went back in.”

“Why did you?”

“Same reason Joe did,” he shrugs at me.  “Wanted rid.  Wanted it over.”

“But why?”

“Just a nightmare,” he muses. “From start to finish.  Leon got us into it, you know.  He told Joe we found it in a car we were trying to rob.  That’s bollocks.  He’s been getting into dealing for a while now.  He thought we would get rich quick.”

“You stupid idiots,” I say, staring down at the ground.  Travis sighs and rakes one hand back through his hair.

“I know.  Look at the fucking mess we’re all in.”

“You know you don’t have to spend your whole life following Leon, don’t you?  You know that, don’t you?”

Travis nods at me, his top teeth pulling at his bottom lip.  He leaves his hand in his hair, and props his head up over his knee.  “We’ll probably never see him again.”

“That would probably be a good thing.”

“I’m sorry, you know.”

“For what?”

“Everything.  Being a dick.  Following Leon.  Letting him involve you and Joe.  I should have said no, at some point.” He sounds angry with himself, and I see him curl his other hand into a fist.  “At some fucking point along the way I should have said no.”

“Leon is not easy to say no to,” I remind him.  “Joe found that out.”

“I think Leon was high when he, you know.” His eyes, darker than Joe’s but more human than Leon’s, jerk back to my face.  “Otherwise, I don’t think he would have…I mean, I don’t think he could do that, the way he did.  You know.”

“He was like an animal.”

“I know.”

“He was like possessed or something.  He wanted to kill Joe, I know he did.  He really wasn’t going to stop.” I bite down on my tongue, fight to control myself, force the tears back.  “If you hadn’t come up the stairs like that, I think Joe would be dead now.  Maybe me too.”

Travis is silent.  I feel him watching me, but when I look at him, his eyes drop down to the ground.  I sit next to him and I have so many questions I could just burst with them.  Questions I have held for years, about Leon and him, and what they do and where they go, and who they are.  Questions about now, and what next, and what is he thinking and feeling?  But I do not have the energy to ask any of them.  It seems to be zapping all of my strength just to sit there next to him.

“What will you do?” I ask him.  “If he doesn’t come back.”

“How will I cope on my own you mean?” he looks at me with a wry grin.

“You know what I mean.”

“I was thinking it was about time I moved out actually.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Not exactly welcome here, am I?” His grin spreads a little further, touching his eyes slightly.  “I was thinking, maybe if I moved out, got a proper job or whatever, then maybe me and mum would get on better, you know.”

“Proper job?”

“Yeah.  Never wanted one before.”

“So why now?  And why do you suddenly want to get on with your mum?”

“I don’t know.  It would just be nice, wouldn’t it?” He shrugs his shoulders, drops his hand down from his hair, and lets it hang over his knees.  “Maybe if me and Leon had moved out ages ago, given them all some more space, there wouldn’t be so much tension and shit in the house.”

“So why didn’t you then?  Move out before I mean.”

“Don’t know,” Travis shrugs.  “Leon always said why should we?  We were here first, I mean, before Mick.  Think he felt like Mick was always trying to push us out, so we shouldn’t make it easy for him.  Stupid really.”

“Mick’s strange,” I sigh.  “I think I understand you and Leon more than I do him, these days.”

“He just wants his kids to be safe.”

“His kids?”

“Yeah.  He feels like the rest of us are a bad influence on them.  He’s probably right to be fair.”

“Joe is a good influence,” I hear myself say, almost fiercely.  We look at each other and then look away almost instantly.  It feels like Joe has become the unspeakable thing now, the elephant in the room, whatever the fuck that means.  To speak his name brings him back, reminds us of the horrible limbo he exists in.  I feel a cold shiver wring right through me, and all of my hairs stand on end.  My stomach lurches and churns whenever I think of him.  It is horrible to be apart from him, I realise, like anything could happen while I am not there.

Travis is nodding at me.  “Joe,” he says.  “Joe was always this good kid.  But annoying because he was so good and quiet.  Used to wind Leon up.  I think he wanted him to be up to no good like us.  But then it was like he was too good and quiet, because no one noticed him, they just put on him.”

“Well I hope you all feel pretty shit about it, that’s all,” I say, getting to my feet quickly, and rubbing my wet eyes dry again.  Travis looks up at me in alarm.

“Where you going?”

“Home.”

“I do feel shit about it!” He gets to his feet and grabs my arm.  “I feel shit about everything Lou, I want you to know that.  I didn’t mean to be such a complete prick.  I didn’t know how not to be one, if that makes sense.”

I stare down at the ground.  I am thinking how close we all are to death, to the end of us, every single day.  How a car could swing around the corner, mount the pavement and wipe you out, at any fucking time.  How you could bite into an apple, and be alive, then choke on a chunk of it, and then be dead.  How easily you could trip on the stairs, and plummet down onto your head, breaking your neck as you land. How these things happen every day, to millions of people.  How human life is so extinguishable, so disposable, like snuffing out a candle flame, poof and you are gone, you are over.  You are dust in the ground.  Disease, I think.  They could be creeping around your body like a silent killer at any fucking time of your life.  Death is just not for old people like my Nan, whose life is as paper thin as their skin.  Death is for young people too.  People who have not even started to live yet.  I stare at the ground as Travis holds onto my limp arm, and I think about Joe and Marianne.  How different it could have been.  How close Joe was to dying at any given second.  How one more punch or kick to the head could have been the end of him.  And Marianne, I see her soaking into her bed, the expensive quilted bedspread absorbing her lifeblood like a tampon.  Soaking her up.  Sucking her dry.

Why did Leon go there, over anywhere else?  What did he hope to find there?  Did he think she would help him or hide him, or soothe his guilt?  Did he hope he would find an answer there?  To what he is and what he has done?  And what must he have looked like when he ran in and discovered her?  Was she unconscious by then, or could she speak to him, tell him why she did it, why now?  Did he speak to her as he wrapped his t-shirt around her wrists?  Did he tell her it would all be okay?  If he had not gone there, if he had never been involved with her, then she would be dead.  Right now.  She would dead and stiff and over.

I am crying as I try to pull my arm out of Travis’s grip.  He places his other hand on my shoulder.  “What’s wrong?  Why are you crying?”

I shake my head, because I am unable to tell him how fragile and thin life really is, how we walk through life never realising that we are balancing on a tightrope, with life and death on different sides.  One wrong move, and that is it.  One piece of bad luck, or bad judgement, and it’s all over.  I picture Joe, my best friend; lying in that hospital bed, more object than person, because he is not there.  Where is he?  Wherever he is, I want to be there too.

“He’ll be okay,” I can hear Travis telling me.  “I know he will.  He’ll wake up.  He’ll wake up soon.”

I nod, because that is all I can allow myself to believe.  He will wake up.  He will wake up and be just fine.  It will all be over.  We will keep our heads down for the rest of the summer, and then we will go back to school.  School.  Christ, I nearly laugh remembering how much I had loathed and scorned the place just days ago, and yet now the word itself tastes delicious in my mouth.  School.  Where we will be safe, and people will tell us what to do and how to do it, and when we walk home, it’s all over and you forget all you have learnt until tomorrow, because it is home time and you just switch off.  I can’t believe I am looking forward to going back to school, but I really am.  Kids go to school.  We will still be kids.

I keep nodding, as the warm tears flow down and over my cheeks.  I taste them between my lips, drawing them in.  Travis keeps his hands on me, one on my shoulder and one on my arm.  I can feel his sadness, rolling from him in waves as he stares into my eyes.  “You really love Joe,” he tells me then.

“Yeah.”

“I mean, really.  I mean really love.  I mean, you two are going to end up together, aren’t you?”

“What?”  I snort with laughter, wrench my arm away and put my hands on my hips.  “What the hell are you talking about?”

Travis straightens up.  “I just think you will,” he says quietly.

“Don’t be fucking stupid.  We’re just friends.  How many fucking times a day to I have to tell you people, we’re just friends?” My voice has climbed loudly, and Travis glances uncomfortably into the hallway.  I glare at him.

“All right, all right,” he says.  “I’m sorry, I just think you will.  Everyone thinks you will.”

“Who the fuck is everyone?”

“Everyone, they all do, they all think it.  Me and Leon joke about it all the time.”

“Oh do you now?”

“Yes, but it pissed me off,” Travis shoves his hands back into his pockets and looks at me sulkily.  “Leon was always saying it.  Making a joke of it.  But it pissed me off.  It pissed me off that Joe could have you, but he didn’t even notice.”

“Have me?” I practically bellow at him.  I am half laughing, half crying, just staring at him in amazement, shaking my head and standing my ground. It feels like familiar territory at least, battling with one of them, defending myself, thinking up good comebacks.  “What the fuck are you talking about Travis?  What a load of shit!  I’m going home.  Me and Joe are not like that.  It’s not like that.”

“Keep telling yourself that then,” he replies.  I shake my head at him.
“Fuck off.”

“All right let me tell you something then,” Travis says this suddenly, urgently, stepping closer and peering into my face. “In case he dies.”

My jaw hits the floor.  I nearly strike him.  “Don’t you fucking say that!” My voice comes out as a scratchy, croaky hiss..

“Let me tell you what he said,” Travis insists.  I turn away in disgust and start to walk back down the path.  He follows me, talking into my ear.  “After mum and Mick found you two in his bed, after that party?  When it was all kicking off here.  When he was standing up for himself for once.  He told me to back off!  He told me never to kiss you again.  He warned me to leave you alone!  He said he was going to kiss you, he said he was the only one who was going to kiss you.” Travis pulls desperately at my arm, trying to stop me.  “Do you hear me?”

“I’m going home,” I tell him, pulling free.  I keep walking.  I don’t look back.  I walk on.  I think, I don’t understand anything anymore.  I really don’t.  I walk home with my arms folded across my chest.  The day is warm but I feel chilled to the bone.  I am thinking of my bed and my duvet, and just hiding for a while.  When I get home, I have the place to myself.  I gather Gremlin up in my arms, and carry him upstairs with me.  He wriggles and slops his oversized tongue across my face.  We curl up in bed together.  I close my eyes and hope that sleep is not too far away, because otherwise I am going to lie here and think about everything that Travis just told me.  I am going to think about it until I go mad.

33

 

Dear World, I find home is a strange, almost alien place when I get back there.  Everything seems different now.  I feel too far away from Joe, and I do not like it.  I ask my mum when I can go back.  I just want to sit with him, I tell her.  She tells me that the police are on their way to speak to me, and I have to talk to them, because they have already waited long enough.  But I just want to sit with Joe, I tell her again and again.  She insists that I sit in the lounge, and she brings me a blanket and a cup of tea and some marmite toast.  It all seems hollow and pointless while Joe is lying on a bed with machines keeping him alive.

The police do not stay long.  The policeman I recognise from the hospital, but he does not say much.  He leaves the talking to the policewoman, who looks like she is in her early forties, and wears her hair in a neat, tight bun.  It does not take long.  I tell them that Leon Lawrenson, Joe’s older brother, attacked him.  I tell them that I tried to stop him.  I tell them that Travis eventually appeared and Leon ran off.  They seem satisfied and they leave.

I see my mum hovering in the doorway, with her arms crossed over her middle, and a tea towel dangling.  I look at her and she tips her head to one side, narrowing her eyes slightly at me.  “What?” I ask her.

“The only thing you didn’t tell them is why,” she says to me.

“Huh?”

“Why,” she repeats, before pulling away from the doorframe and heading back to the kitchen.  “Why he would do that.”

My mind flicks back to the bags of white powder, pouring thickly into the toilet bowl.  I wonder if Lorraine and Mick have been home yet, and if they have, what have they found there?  I left out the bit about the drugs because I didn’t want to get Joe into any more trouble.

We eat dinner in silence.  Mum, Les and I.  The phone does not stop ringing all evening.  Twice it is Sara to get the latest news, and see if I am okay.  Once it is my dad, who has heard about the attack.  I don’t speak to him, but my mum deals with him in careful, clipped tones, and I hear her advise him not to come rushing around as I am still in shock and not talking.  I thank her inwardly for this.  Lorraine calls twice as well.  The first time I leap up to grab the phone but my mother beats me to it.  Lorraine tells her that there has been no change, which is neither good news nor bad news apparently.  She tells her that they have gone home to deal with the younger boys and left Travis at the hospital in case anything changes.  The second time Lorraine calls it is to say she is back at the hospital, having sent Travis home to get some sleep, and that there is still no change.

I hover around my mother while she talks on the phone, trying to read her expressions, trying to hear Lorraine’s voice on the other end.  My mother keeps her eyes on me, listens intently, and then frowns and lifts her eyebrows at the same time.  She makes a strange face at me.  “Really?” she says to Lorraine.  “How odd!  Did you speak to her?”  I mouth to my mum, ‘who? What?  Who?’  She waves her hand at me and concentrates on what Lorraine is telling her.  I watch her mouth opening and closing like a fish.  “Oh my goodness!” she exclaims eventually, and I can barely stand it.

“What is it?  What?  What?” I beg, pulling at her arm and bouncing around her feet.  She holds me away.

“Oh my goodness, that is terrible,” she says again.  “I can’t believe it, how awful…Lorraine, hang on one tic, Lou is getting in a right state, hang on.” She holds the phone against her chest and looks at me.  “It’s not Joe, nothing has changed, it’s something else, I’ll tell you in a minute,” she blurts out to me, and then puts the phone back to her ear.  “Really?  Good God…..Unbelievable.  You wouldn’t think it would you?  I can’t believe it Lorraine.  Is she okay, the mother?….Oh right.  I see….Good God, what a shock.  What a day!…Okay, you’ve got to go….Oh yes, I will, I will, if she wants to.  I’ll have to talk to her….Okay then.  Okay. Bye now.”

Finally my mum hangs up the phone, exhales a huge breath and shakes her head at the floor, as if trying to clear her head.  “What?” I practically scream at her in the hallway.  “What else is it?”

My mother turns to look at me, and lifts one hand to scratch nervously at her neck.  I can see that she is trying to work out the best way to tell me something and I am all over again filled with horrible fear.  “Lou,” she says, and reaches out to place her hands on my shoulders.  “Lorraine is back at the hospital visiting Joe, and she called to say she ran into a lady there, a lady she recognised?”  I stare at her, eyes wide, waiting, just waiting.  “Anyway,” she goes on, “she approached the lady, asking if she knew her from somewhere, and it turned out to be Marianne’s mother, Mrs. Sholing?”

“What?  What was she doing there?”

“It appears Marianne is also in the hospital, darling,” mum says and tightens her hands on my shoulders, biting her lip, her eyes searching mine.  I shake my head at her, not getting it.

“Why?”

“Um, I don’t know the full story, but it seems she may have tried to end her life at some point today.”

I pull back.  I pull back from her hands.  I stare at her as if she is insane.  I think, no, don’t be stupid, fuck that.  “What?” I ask her.  “What do you mean?”

“She tried to kill herself, Lou.  Apparently.” My mother is blinking at me, staring at me as if she can’t understand or believe it either.  “Mrs. Sholing is in a terrible state apparently.  Lorraine had to calm her down.  She wanted you to visit Marianne, but I said I would have to see….you’ve been through so much today already, I just don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” I agree with her.  “I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to take you back?”

I think quickly.  I think of Marianne, and all I feel is wonder and confusion, but also anger.  Anger.  I can’t somehow believe it to be true.  Then I remember her strange phone calls to me earlier.  God it seems like a lifetime ago.

“I think better leave it till tomorrow,” my mum says then, making the decision for me, for which I am strangely grateful.  I sigh, and let her lead me back to the sofa, and my blanket.  “Enough is enough for today,” she says, as I sit back down and she covers me up.  She sits next to me.  “What a day,” she says to herself.  “I just can’t believe any of it.  Are you okay love?”

“I don’t know.  I suppose so.”

“Why do you think Marianne would do that?”

“Attention probably,” I reply, and the bitterness in my voice surprises both my mother and me.

“Well I suppose it could be a cry for help.”

“She’s okay though?  She’s not going to…”

“Oh no, no, no.  It was her wrists apparently.  They had to stitch them up.  She was brought in by a boy.  Did you know she had a boyfriend?”

“A boy?”

“Yes, that’s what Lorraine told me.  Mrs. Sholing was told a boy found Marianne and brought her to the hospital, but then left.  She doesn’t know who it was.”  My mum pulls the blanket over her legs too, and snuggles closer to me.  “Maybe Josh or Ryan?” she murmurs.  I don’t answer, because a strange little realisation is occurring in my head.  I don’t want to say a thing until I have spoke to Marianne.

“If you take me tomorrow to see her,” I say to mum, “then can I sit with Joe as well?”

“Of course you can love.  Definitely.  But I want you to have a good nights sleep, and a decent breakfast.  You’ve got to look after yourself you know.”

I nod and look back at the TV.  I am all out of words, and thoughts.  I stare at the TV, taking nothing in, while my mind runs around on itself, hitting blank walls.  I feel my mother watching me all evening.  I see her wipe her eyes from time to time.

We leave the house at ten forty the next morning.  Mum informs me that intensive care allows visitors at eleven.  We are not sure where Marianne is, but my mum thinks we’ll find her mother there somewhere.  I feel conflicting emotions on the way over. I am both dreading seeing Joe, and desperate to at the same time.  I cannot even fathom what I am going to say to Marianne, but the best way to deal with it so far is to just not think about it.  Deal with it when it comes, I tell myself.  Deal with it when it comes.

We go to intensive care first, and relieve Lorraine from her shift.  She has been there all night, and barely slept by the look of her.  My mum holds her for a while in the corridor outside Joe’s room.  I hover by the closed door, peering in, then looking back at Lorraine and Mum, not knowing whether to go in or not.  I see Lorraine leaning into my mum, weak on her own legs, crying, and shaking her head.  My mum nods at me over her shoulder.  “Go on in love,” she tells me, so I do.

Joe is there.  Joe is still there.  I look at him and feel a surge of impatience with him. “You lazy sod,” I tell him, pulling up the nearest chair and finding his hand again.  “Look at you laying there!  Not gonna’ get any riveting conversation out of you today, am I?” I shuffle the chair closer and lean towards him.  I wonder if he can really hear me.  He looks exactly the same as yesterday, except for the bruises on his face have increased in their vivid colour.  “You won’t believe what else happened yesterday,” I whisper to him.  “Get this.  Marianne tried to top herself.  Really.  She did.  She’s in here somewhere too and wants to see me.  I feel like telling her to fuck off.  Remember those calls yesterday, when she was all snappy and pissy? Fuck knows what’s wrong with her.”  I sigh, and brush my hair away from my face.  Joe does not move.  I guess he can’t move.  I look at his face, at his swollen, closed eyes, and wonder where he is.  If he is just stuck in an endless dream somewhere that he can’t get back from.

The door opens from behind and Lorraine shuffles back in.  “They say it’s good to talk to him,” she tells me.  “Your mum is going to take me home to sort the boys out, then I’ll be back.  Can you stay with him till then?”

“Course I can.”

“Thank you.” She turns to go and then stops herself.  “Lou, your mum said you told the police it was Leon.”

I turn my head and look at her.  I nod.  “It was.”

“Honey, I know.  I know.  Can you tell me something else?”

“What?”

“The drugs Joe was caught with.  They were Leon’s weren’t they?”

I nod again.  Lorraine steadies herself.  I think, I have never seen her look so weak before.  All the fight is gone.  All the anger.  She just looks exhausted and defeated.  She does not say anything else.  I don’t think she has the strength.  She just leaves and I hear her feet clacking slowly back down the corridor.

I stay with Joe all day.  Nurses come and go, checking things, writing on charts.  Some of them speak to me; ask me if I want anything, if I am okay.  Some of them do their duties without even looking at me, as if I am a ghost they cannot see.  I get a sore bum sat on the chair for hours, so I end up getting to my feet and going for a walk.  One of the nurses tells me where I can get a drink and a snack, so I wander off, making sure the nurses know I will be back.

I find Mrs. Sholing at the vending machine.  She has her head resting on it, and is staring grimly into the void of chocolate and snacks, with her money in one hand. She is wearing a long black work skirt, and a long chocolate coloured cardigan.  Her hair, so dark like Marianne’s is twisted up neatly and pinned into place. I approach tentatively from behind, not knowing what to do or say.  I hold the pound coin my mum gave me tightly in one hand.  It burns a hot little circle in the centre of my sweaty palm.  As I get closer, she must hear me, or become aware of someone behind her, because she straightens up, clears her throat and starts to feed her money into the machine.  She only looks behind at me after she has punched in the code for the item she wants.  “Oh!” she says when she sees me.

“Hi Mrs. Sholing.”

“Lou,” she says, and walks towards me, just as her item clunks to the bottom of the machine.  I point towards it.

“Don’t forget your food.”

“Oh,” she says again, sounding sort of vacant.  She turns hurriedly, opens the flap and pulls it out.  It is a mars bar.  “It’s for Marianne,” she admits.  “I wasn’t sure what her favourite was.  Do you know?”

“I think she likes them all,” I shrug, and take up my place at the machine.  I get myself a can of lemonade and a packet of crisps.  “Is she okay?” I ask, just to fill the silence that has consumed the corridor.  “Mum told me last night.”

“Oh.”  Mrs. Sholing holds the mars bar in one hand, and fiddles with the edge of the wrapper with her other hand.  She looks at me, and then looks away again, her brow furrowed in confusion.  I think, she reminds me of Lorraine.  She looks utterly beaten and overwhelmed.  “I don’t understand it,” she says suddenly, throwing up both of her hands.  “I’m so confused Lou.  Do you understand it?  I hate to ask you, but do you have any idea why she would do something like this?”

I start to walk with her, back down the corridor.  “Mrs. Sholing,” I say slowly, as we shuffle along together.  “There is something.  Something you might not know.”

She is looking at me desperately.  I am thinking of course, of lots of things.  Of weed, and coke, and drink, and razors, and boys.

“What is it?”

“She cuts herself,” I say.  “I don’t know if you know, but she cuts herself.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Sholing exhales slowly.  “Well, yes.  We did know.  I mean, it was a long time ago, before we moved here.  We sent her for help and she stopped. It was because she was getting bullied so badly by these girls at her school.  Which is why we moved her.”

“She still does it though,” I say in a small voice.  I hate to be the one to tell her, I really do, but I find it hard to believe she thinks Marianne has stopped?  The woman looks at me, her expression is one of someone who is totally lost and has no clue where they are going or why.

“Does she?”

“Yes.  A lot.  All over.  I should have said before, I’m sorry.” I bow my head, biting my lip and watching the pale green floor under my feet.

“No,” Mrs. Sholing replies quickly.  “Don’t say that.  It’s not your fault.  It’s mine.  Of course it is.  It’s mine!  A mother should know these things.  A mother should know!  I didn’t know.”  She starts shaking her head.  “I didn’t know she was still doing it.  I didn’t know.”

“People can be really good at keeping secrets,” I try to tell her.  “You shouldn’t feel so bad.  People can be really secretive.  Kids especially.” I grimace to myself, remembering all of the things my mother still has no clue about.  Such as Joe and me going over the bridge to Somerley.  Selling drugs to people.  It makes my stomach turn over on itself and my cheeks burn with shame.

“It’s our job to know these things though,” Mrs. Sholing says.  “I didn’t even know she was down, or depressed, or worried about anything!”

“Neither did I, really.”

“Really?”

“Well she called me twice yesterday.  She wanted to meet up but I was busy with Joe, you know, moving his stuff to our house, because he’d been chucked out.” I look at her and see her big green eyes, identical to Marianne’s staring at me in bewilderment.  “You know, this was before, before he got.  Before he got in here.”

“His mother,” Mrs. Sholing says, eyes still on me.  “His mother is in bits.  She told me all about it.  How is he?”

“Still asleep, or whatever they call it.”

“My God.”

“I’m staying with him all day.  I was helping him yesterday, before, and she called me, and I couldn’t see her, because of Joe.  I think she was angry with me.”  I shoot a sideways glance at Marianne’s mother, wondering if she will blame me now she knows this.

“Who knows what was going through her head?” she says to me softly.

“Do you want me to see her?” I ask.

“Oh yes.  Oh yes please.  Well, I mean, if you could.  If you want to. I know Joe is, more, more pressing right now, but, if you could…” she trails off helplessly, wringing her hands and practically squeezing the life out of the mars bar.

“Where is she?”

“Children’s ward.”

“Now?”

“Oh yes please.  If you don’t mind.  She would love to see you.”

I am not so sure about that, but I keep my thoughts to myself, and turn left instead of right.  I feel guilty doing this, like I am being torn in two.  I know I have to see Marianne. I have to.  I have to speak to her.  But I want to be with Joe.  I want to be there with him, otherwise he is all alone.  What if he wakes up and finds no one is there?

I can’t allow myself to dwell on this, so I walk on.  I follow Marianne’s mother to the Children’s ward, bracing myself for what I might find there.  Initially, I am confused and surprised.  I had been expecting a terrible place, rows of beds filled with deathly pale children, on their last legs.  But it is not like that at all.  It is bright and warm and exuberant, with murals of cartoon characters all over the walls, and music playing, and a toy corner where lots of smaller children are gathered in front to a man who is putting on a puppet show.

Mrs. Sholing traipses past the children, staring right ahead, almost as if she cannot bear to look at them.  She leads me down to the far end, where I can already see Marianne, sat cross-legged on a bed, fiddling with her mobile phone.  Her hair is loose and hanging down over her face.  She is wearing purple jeans and a black top, with a scruffy green cardigan hanging over her tiny shoulders.  I see her, and I am surprised by the anger and resentment that flood me.  I go ahead of Mrs. Sholing, who hangs back nervously.  I get the feeling she is afraid of her own daughter, afraid of what she will say, or do.  I don’t blame her for that.

I approach the bed bravely.  I think of Joe.  He can’t sit cross-legged in his bed yet.  He’s not even fucking there.  When she looks up and sees me, she does not even look surprised, or pleased, or worried, or anything.  She gives me the same look she always does.  Her eyes, as always, almost totally unreadable.  “Hi,” she says flippantly, throwing her phone onto the bed.  She shakes her hair away from her face, and her little pointed chin juts out at me defiantly.

“Hi,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.  She motions for me to sit next to her, so I do, taking care not to actually touch her.  I think I am afraid that her insanity will rub off on me.  She gets up abruptly and yanks the curtains around her bed.

“No fucking privacy in this place,” she complains, hopping back onto the bed.  I stare at her, amazed.  “Can’t believe they put me in the kiddies ward.”

“When can you go home?” I ask her.

“Dunno,” she shrugs.  “Some time later.  When they’ve done all their checks I suppose.  It’s so boring in here!”

“Well what did you expect?”

“I didn’t expect anything did I?” she stares at me and asks.  “I expected to be dead.”  I stare back at her.  She holds my gaze, but then breaks away and giggles.

“I don’t believe you,” I tell her coldly.  “I don’t believe you meant to die.”

“Don’t you?  Oh well.  Think what you like.”

“So why did you do it?”

“Lots of reasons,” she cocks her head at me.  “Some of which you know.  Some of which you don’t know.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me yesterday?  Because you were feeling so bad you wanted to kill yourself?”

“Well sort of,” she shrugs again, and she leans back on the bed with her hands behind her, and her legs kicking out at the curtain.  “I suppose if I am truthful, I wanted to give you a chance to be a good friend.”

I stare at her, open mouthed.  I am utterly stunned.  I feel like I have been slapped in the face.  “You what?”

“You know,” she goes on casually, kicking her legs.  “I wanted to see if you’d come.  I wanted to see if you’d choose me for once.  Instead of Joe.”

“Joe needed me,” I say this through gritted teeth.

“He always needs you.  And you always need him.  It’s so predictable and boring, and yet you wonder why you have no other friends!” She rolls her eyes at me sulkily, and looks away for a moment.  “Wonder why you do don’t just fuck each other and get it over with,” she mutters.

“You bitch,” I mutter back.  She whips her head back to stare at me.

“Why am I?”

“Joe was thrown out of home, that was why I was helping him yesterday,” I tell her, trying to keep my voice down.  “He was busted carrying you know what for you know who, did you know that?”

She narrows her eyes.  Shakes her head at me.  “When?”

“Friday.  He got arrested.  Thrown out of home.  Leon and Travis even came to me to make sure I kept my mouth shut.”

“So why is he in here?”

“You don’t know?”

“My mum won’t fucking tell me anything,” Marianne wails, sounding like a spoilt little child.  “She thinks anything will send me over the edge!  How did he get in here?  What’s wrong with him?”

I stare down at the bedspread under us.  I pick at it with my finger and thumb.  I take deep breaths, in and out; calming myself down, telling myself it is not her fault she does not know.  “Leon attacked him,” I hear myself say, my eyes on the bedspread. It’s awful really, because every time I think of it, it rushes through my head like an unwanted movie.  All of it.  The dull sound of a curled fist beating flesh that cannot escape.  The gurgling choking noise Joe made in his throat.  I fight the tears that threaten to swell in my eyes.

“Badly?” Marianne whispers this.  I look at her.

“He’s in a coma.”

I watch her green eyes grow larger.  “You’re fucking joking.”

“I’m not joking Marianne.  He’s in intensive care.  I’ve got to go back in a minute, because I’m the only one there.”

“Well what’s wrong with him?  When will he wake up?”

“They think when the swelling goes down.  He had bleeding in his brain and his internal organs.  They had to operate.  He nearly died Marianne.”  I find my eyes meeting hers, and the tears come too fast for me to stop them.  “He still might die,” I tell her.  I feel her hand land on mine, and I pull away quickly, dragging the hand across my wet eyes.

“Why are you mad with me?” she asks.

“Because you did this to yourself!” I hiss at her.  I reach for her arm then, and snatch back the cuff of her over-sized cardigan.  Her wrist is bound in thick white bandages.  I raise my lip and drop her arm again.  “You’re always doing things to yourself.  Joe didn’t.  He didn’t ask to have a family full of fucking maniacs, and he didn’t ask to be thrown out of home for something his brothers did, and he didn’t put himself in hospital, unlike you!”

Marianne is silent for a moment, and I can see her considering what I have said, what I have accused her of, as she folds her arms across her middle and crosses one leg over the other.  She looks petulant, watching my face, waiting for me to add anything else.  I sniff and wipe my nose on the side of my hand.  “And you did this for attention,” I say, not looking at her.  “You called me twice.  You couldn’t accept I was busy with Joe, so you did this!  Are you happy now?  Are you happy you got my attention?”

“Don’t fucking flatter yourself you stupid bitch,” she says to me in a low, cold voice which is so startlingly different to her normal voice, that I move back slightly, unwilling to be too close to her.  “You think I’d slit my wrists over you?”

“Why then?  Why?”

“Just like you to expect it to be so black and white,” she says scathingly.  “Do you not think there might be millions of reasons why someone tries to end it?”

“But did you really want to end it, Marianne?  Did you really?”

“At the time, yes.  I was angry.  I was pissed off at you and Joe.  Always together, always shutting me out, unless it’s convenient for you.  I was pissed off with my parents.” She leans forward, over her folded arms, and her hair drops over one shoulder, gleaming black.  “Off they go again on another fucking little trip. Business, they say. Business.  Yeah, right.  Do they ever think to invite me along?  Do they ever think I might get bored and lonely on my own?  It’s like they can’t fucking wait to get away from me.”

“You should tell them then,” I say.  “You should tell them how you feel.  They don’t know how you feel.”

“Then how do I know exactly how they feel?” she shoots back viciously.  I frown at her, not understanding.  “How is it I can empathise with them, but they can’t with me?”

“What do you mean?”

“The baby.  My twin. Melissa.  I know how they feel because I feel it too.  I’ve felt it my entire fucking life.  It drags me down.  I wake up in the morning, and it is there Lou.  She is there.  Because she isn’t there!” She is getting worked up now.  She stops and tries to compose herself by rubbing a hand across her mouth.  Then she pulls at her top lip with her finger and thumb and glares at the curtain that shields us from her mother.  “I live with it every day,” she goes on, one leg twitching angrily on top of the other.  “I wake up and she’s there, the misery of it, the why’s and the what if’s.  I have to put on a brave face, try to cheer them up.  I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid.  Trying to make it okay for them.  Trying to be enough for them, to make up for losing her.  But it’s never enough, because they are still sad.  They are still grieving for her, every day Lou.  Can’t you see it when you look at them?” She turns to look at me questioningly.  “Their faces.  They’re so good at pretending to be fine, but it’s not real, it’s never real.  It’s fake.  It’s pretend.  It’s not there.  Do you know what that means Lou?  That means my entire fucking life is fake and pretend, and not there. Maybe I decided I just didn’t want to do it any more.”

I exhale the breath I have been holding in.  I scratch my cheek, and then rest my forehead in my hand.  I don’t know what to say to her, I don’t know what to say for the best, so I just say what I am thinking. “You should tell them all of this,” I sigh.  “They don’t know Marianne.  You may be right about all of that, and it’s not fair and it’s not nice, but they’re not doing it to you on purpose.”

She does not answer me.  She brings her feet up onto the bed, and wraps her arms around her knees.  I watch as she presses her face against her legs, closing her eyes tightly.  “Marianne,” I say to her.  “Our parents aren’t mind readers.  They don’t know what’s going on in our lives if we don’t tell them.”

“So when did you get so wise?” she says into her knees.

“Me?” I snort.  “I feel like a hundred fucking years old today.  I am a little old lady, you know.  Sixteen is like, gone.”

“I’m sorry,” I hear her say.  She mumbles it into her knees, and her hair falls all around her face, blocking her out.  “I’m such a bitch.”

“It’s what I like about you,” I joke.  “It’s what makes you so intriguing remember?”

“I don’t think I deserve any friends, really.”

“Maybe none of us do.  The way we’ve been acting lately.”

She pulls away from her knees finally and pushes her hair back behind her ears, and there are real tears in her eyes.  “I’m sorry about Joe,” she whispers and I nod at her.  I know she is.

“He’ll be all right.  I know he will.”

“I just never, I never thought Leon could do something like that.”

I look down at my lap.  “Neither did I.  Maybe he was high.”

“Why did he do it?  Why did he attack him?”

“The drugs,” I say softly.  “Joe was flushing the drugs.” Marianne opens her mouth slowly, disbelievingly.  I nod at her.  “When we went to get Joe’s stuff from the house, he found loads more of it.  They’d told him it was all over, all done.  He could just about cope with being arrested if it was all over.  But they lied, Marianne.  It was never a one off.  It was never a once in a lifetime thing.  It was a career choice.”

Marianne shakes her head at me.  “I can’t believe he flushed them!”

“He lost the plot a bit.  He was so angry.  He just wanted it gone.  And then Leon appeared and he just…” I stop, biting at my lip.  “Fucking hell,” I tell her.  “It was awful Marianne.  I never want to see anything like that again in my entire life.  I tried to stop him.  I kept trying.  I just wasn’t strong enough.  He kept shoving me away.”

Her eyes move up to the bruises on my face.  “Is that what they are?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And then what happened?”

“Travis appeared,” I remembered.  “He shoved Leon off me.  Leon ran out.  Then we tried to help Joe.  I can’t really remember it all after that.”

“You were probably in shock.”

“The police know Leon did it,” I tell her then.  Her face is sombre as she nods at me in reply.  “I had to tell them.  He might die, Marianne.  What if he dies?”  I can’t help it then, I start to cry.  Really cry.  Marianne puts her arm around my shoulder and pulls me into hers.  I cover my face with both hands.

“He’ll be all right,” she tells me, rubbing my arm.  “He will be.  Lou?  There is something else I have to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“It was Leon that found me.”

“What?” I pull back, staring at her.

“He found me,” she nods, biting at her lip again.  “He found me at home.  He stopped the bleeding.  He wrapped his t-shirt around my wrists and took me here.  He carried me out to his car and drove me here.”

I am just staring at her, blinking, shaking my head, trying to believe it, trying to understand.  “You mean, he saved you?”

“Yeah.  He saved my life Lou.”

I don’t know what to say, or think.  I suddenly remember Joe, and how he is all alone, and I am meant to be sitting with him.  I slip slowly from the bed.  “Marianne I have to go back to Joe,” I tell her, wiping my eyes.  She nods in understanding.

“It’s all right.  I’ll be all right.”

“I’ve got to go.”  I turn and stumble through the curtains.  I see Mrs. Sholing hovering nearby, and she falls into step beside me and follows me all the way back out of the ward.

“What did she say?” she asks me, wide-eyed and frantic as she hurries along beside me.

“It’s a lot of stuff,” I tell her.  “But some of it is to do with her twin.  You probably need to talk to her about that.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Sholing stops walking and I go on.  “Thank you for seeing her,” she calls after me in a small, timid voice.  “I hope your friend will be okay.”

32

 

Dear World, my mum wants to take me home.  She says they will call us if anything changes, but I refuse.  I just stay nestled into her, like a small child, with my arms around her middle, and my head in her lap.  She drops one hand onto my head and keeps it there.  I hear Travis offer to get her a cup of tea, and she sighs before she agrees to let him.  At some point after this I might drift off for a bit, because I am suddenly jerking awake again, wiping my mouth, and hoping I have not dribbled all over my mum’s lap.  I wake up confused and unsettled, and I am reminded instantly of that strange night at Marianne’s, how I woke up with my head on Joe.

“Joe?” I ask, sitting up, pulling away from my mum, who shushes me and smoothes my hair down with her hand.

“It’s okay,” she tells me quickly, “it’s okay, he’s okay.”

“They say you saved his life,” another voice, a cracked and broken voice tells me.  I look beyond my mum.  The waiting room has changed.  New patients have replaced the old ones, but we are all still here.  Lorraine is now next to my mum, and Travis is on her other side, with his head in his hands.  I squint at Lorraine.  She peers back at me through red ringed eyes.  Her mascara has run with her tears.  There are muddy grey tracks running down both of her cheeks.  I look at her blankly, not understanding.  She leans forward slightly, clutching her shiny red handbag onto her lap.  “You gave him mouth to mouth, don’t you remember?” she asks me. “Travis said you did.  You kept him breathing.”

“I tried to…” I frown back at her.  The memory is not clear.  The clearest memories I have are the ones I do not want to see.  The image of Joe all floppy and bloodied.  Of Leon pummelling his still body.

“You did, you did!” Lorraine says urgently.  “You saved his life, that’s what they are saying!”

“But he’s okay now?” I ask slowly, looking carefully at all of their faces.  I cannot see Mick anywhere.

“He’s stable,” my mum slips her arm around me and pats my shoulder reassuringly.  “They managed to stop all the bleeding.  He’s stable.  But he’s in intensive care love.  He hasn’t woken up yet.”

“They’re going to let us see him any minute now,” Lorraine adds, as fresh tears push yet more mascara down her cheeks.  “Any minute.  They said didn’t they Shell?  They said!”

“Yes love,” my mum’s voice soothes her.  “Any minute now.”

“Can I come too?” I ask them.  Lorraine nods at me instantly.

“You and me darling,” she sobs, breaking down again.  “You and me go in first, all right?”

 

It is only another five minutes that we have to wait, but it feels like yet more impossible time that just does not move.  I sit and stare at the floor.  Lorraine falls silent, but I can hear her crying softly.  Travis does not move or speak, not even when Mick comes in, smelling of cigarette smoke.  He looks at me briefly, taps Travis on the head, and slips into his seat when Travis vacates it.  I can feel all their questions in the air.  Who, why, how, how could he?  How could he?  I have my own questions for them, but I do not dare open my mouth.  I bite down on my tongue, and keep my teeth pressed tightly together.  Inside my mind I see Joe, slumped on the bathroom floor and it fills my heart with a raw and vile kind of pain that makes me want to be sick.  I sit there in silence and I feel all their guilt because the atmosphere is thick with it.

Finally a male doctor, with thick bushy ginger hair comes forward and motions for Lorraine to come with him.  She leaps to her feet, passes my mum, and seizes my arm, practically yanking me out of my chair.  I let her pull me into her side, where she captures me with her firm arm, and marches me along with her, her red heels click clacking on the floor as we follow the doctor.  We go down long corridors, filled with swishing curtains, swearing patients, and bustling nurses.  We follow the doctor into a lift and go up to the next floor.  We are taken to a small room, and as we go in, two nurses finish their checks, smile at us in sympathy, and leave the room.

We shuffle hesitantly inside.  In the movies, or on TV, I remember the loved ones always flinging themselves at the patient, wailing and falling onto the bed.  But I realise it is not like that in real life.  Lorraine is stiff and nervous, and I am terrified.  The doctor has to gently persuade us to move further inside the room, so that he can close the door after us.

My best friend Joe is lying on the bed, but it is hard to make out where he begins, and the tubes and machines end.  I do not know what any of them mean, or what they are doing for him.  His head is heavily bandaged.  His nose and mouth are covered with the tubes and a mask.  All I can see of Joe is his eyes and his forehead.  But even his eyes, which are closed, are so swollen that I wonder how it can really be him.

“Can he hear us?” I hear Lorraine ask in a squeak of a voice.

“We don’t know, but we think so, on some level,” the doctor tells her gently, holding his clipboard against his tummy.  “We certainly believe it’s worth talking to people who are unconscious.”

“Is he in a coma?” I hear my own voice whisper.

“That’s right,” the doctor tells me.  “But we think he will start to wake up, once the swelling goes down.”

Lorraine just stands there.  She looks aghast.  I inch forward.  I am terrified of him, and yet I am drawn towards him.  I slip into the chair that is next to his bed.  I am staring at him, trying to find him.  My eyes brim with useless, soundless tears.  I swallow, and that is when I see his hand laying there.  His palm is flat against the blanket.  It is his hand.  I can see that.  I lean forward, and pick it up.  I feel how cold it is, especially the palm.  I rub his hand between mine, trying to warm it up, trying to reach him.

I feel Lorraine move behind me.  She places her hands, awkwardly at first, on my shoulders.  Then I feel her sigh massively, a juddery sob escaping at the same time.  She massages my shoulders slightly.  “That brings back a memory,” she sniffles from behind me.  “You holding his hand like that.”

“Does it?”

“Yeah.  I’ve even got a photo.  Perhaps that’s why the memory is so clear.  You were both about one and a half.  Not quite two.  There’s me and your mum, pushing you both home from the park in your buggies.  You reached out from your buggy with your little hand, to Joe.  And he took it.”

I nod.  I have seen the photo.  It’s at Lorraine’s house, in one of her massive photo albums.  All you can see is our hands linked, pulling the two pushchairs together as our mums push us home.

“I’ll give you a few moments alone,” the doctor, who we have both forgotten about tells us.  We hear the door open and shut again.

“He held my hand on the first day of school,” I say.  “I remember that.  We were both nervous.  He picked up my hand.”

“Always been stuck to each other like glue,” Lorraine says softly.  “Me and your mum Lou, we were always so thankful for you two, did you know that?”

“No.”

“You were both so good.  We used to say it all the time.  Aren’t they good?  Aren’t they so good together?  We had our hands full with the others, but not you two.  As long as you two had each other you were fine.”

“He’s gonna’ be fine,” I say then, and I look over my shoulder and up at her face.  She nods bravely, but fresh tears are flowing from her eyes.

“He better be!” she smiles at me.  “God knows, he better be.  I’ve got to say I’m bloody sorry, haven’t I eh?”  She laughs, cries, and wipes tears and snot away from her face with a tissue she tugs out of her bag.  I look back at Joe, holding his hand tightly between mine.  I stare at his face, willing him to wake up.  But he does not move.  He just lies there.  He is so still.

“Why don’t you hold his other hand?” I ask Lorraine.  I feel her hands leave my shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “I’m scared.  I don’t want to…”

“You can’t hurt him,” I tell her.  I nod at the chair on the other side of the bed.  She sniffs, wipes her nose again and walks around the bed.  I watch her slide awkwardly into the other chair, looking nervously at the machines that bleep and whirr all around the bed.

“I just can’t believe this,” she says then, resting her head in her hand just for a moment, before she looks up at me across the bed, across Joe.  “My baby boy.”

“He’s going to be fine,” I tell her again, and I mean it.  I fucking mean it.  I squeeze his hand to make sure he knows I mean it as well.  “I’m not fucking going through my life without him,” I say, and Lorraine laughs in surprise.

“What am I gonna’ do?” she shakes her head at Joe.  She lifts his other hand and holds it tenderly between her own.  “He doesn’t deserve a mother like me.”

“You didn’t do this,” I tell her stiffly.  The silence hangs between us then, and we meet eyes only briefly before it is too much, and we both look down at the hand we hold.  The silence speaks his name.  Leon.  The silence speaks the truth.  He has become the elephant in the room. The unspeakable thing.  After that, we cannot talk.  We sit, holding his hands, staring at him, listening to the machines.  We sit in our own minds, reminded of how close we always are to death.

I remember my Nan’s funeral.  I remember how unreal it seemed that a person who was talking, moving, breathing, feeling and thinking just days before, was now inside a box.  Going into the ground.  While the leaves still shook on the trees that surrounded us, and the birds still screamed and glided over our heads.  I remember that line they always read out; ‘in the midst of life, we are in death.’  I didn’t understand it then.  How can that be?  How can we be in death, while we are still alive?  It made no sense to me.

But it makes an awful kind of sense to me now.  As I look at the boy on the bed, who is neither dead nor alive, I understand what it means now.  He is with us, yet not with us.  He is hovering somewhere in-between, like my Nan was, in her final days.  I remember going to see her in the hospital.  I remember how tiny and ghostlike she seemed, shrunken under the blankets.  I remember looking at her and knowing that she was close to death.  I remember knowing that she could not and would not get back out of that bed.  I knew it was only a matter of time.

I remember touching her hand, wondering what it would feel like, and discovering that it felt like cold paper.  I was looking at her, I was watching her leave, and I was thinking about her soap collection.  When she lived in her old house, before they made her move to the nursing home, my Nana had this collection of soaps.  She kept them all on her dressing table.  They took up nearly all of the space there.  They were all different shapes and sizes and colours and scents.  My favourite was shaped like a swan, a white swan.  She never used them, she never got them wet, she just collected them, and her bedroom was heavenly with their smell.  I never found out what happened to her soaps when she moved to the nursing home.  She didn’t even get a proper bar of soap there though.  Just that antibacterial liquid soap that you pump out onto your hand.

I hang onto Joe’s hand now.  I press my lips down upon it.  I smell his skin.  I hold my cheek to his palm, letting him feel my warmth, my life.  I beg him to come back.  I beg him to wake up.

But nothing happens

Nothing happens.  All that happens is, I have to go home.