It isn’t perfect but it will have to do.
Vincent puts down the container of Vim, from which he’s managed to eke out a thin crust of powder. It’s taken off the worst of the brown stains from the bathtub when combined with the Brillo pad he’d found in the kitchen. The enamel is scratched with grey lines now and his hands are sore and flecked with dirt and pink, grimy foam, but at least it’s clean. He can’t do anything about the black mould on the ceiling and he’s not going near the disgusting sink and toilet but he can have a bloody bath at last.
He turns the key in the lock and gives it a jiggle. It never feels very secure and he longs for a bolt he could slide across. If he had a radio he’d put it on to alert people the bathroom was occupied but that wouldn’t necessarily make any difference. No one seems to care about privacy here, apart from him.
The thin stream of water is nowhere near as hot as he would like but there’s an old box of Radox on the side and he throws in a lavender-scented handful of grit along with a squirt of shampoo for bubbles.
When the bath is ready, Vincent removes his clothes, catching sight in the flecked mirror above the sink of his pale scrawny chest and the fresh crop of spots scattered across his cheeks. Grimacing and turning away, he climbs into the tub and lowers his substandard, disappointing body into the water.
He wants to lie there and not think of anything but what happened last night keeps playing out in his mind. He and his mother haven’t spoken a word to each other since then.
It all started when Hugo had teased him about how slowly he was eating his vegetable moussaka. They never got to eat meat anymore, even though his mother had once been as keen on a bacon sandwich as anyone. Now she says she doesn’t eat ‘anything with a soul’, which is such bullshit. The constant beans and pulses make Vincent fart and give him pains in his stomach. He looks paler than usual these days but his mother doesn’t even seem to care that he is a growing boy who needs fuel.
She’s changed so much since they’ve been here. When he thinks about them being in Devon and her once working at the solicitor’s office, wearing smart skirts and heels, she seems like a completely different woman. These days she has a permanently glazed look in her eyes from all the pot, which she smokes or cooks into disgusting cookies that Vincent tried and was so sick he is never going near that stuff again. She never wears a bra anymore and it makes him uncomfortable to see her pointy tits moving about under her T-shirts. They’re all like that here, and while it was thrilling at first to see so many breasts, now it has turned him off a little. There is one woman, called Catherine, whose tits hang down practically to her waist and are always popping out the side of her dungarees.
And they all do it for Hugo.
His hatred for the man is starting to feel like something tangible he could touch and shape with his hands. It sticks in his throat and makes his belly hurt and sometimes he pictures it like a big lumpy tumour growing inside him. He’s starting to feel that he hates all men or at least the swaggering confident ones, who look down on him and get women to behave like pathetic slaves.
So he’d been making a face as he looked down at the meal Hugo had made. Hugo said, ‘What’s up, Vincent – too good for this?’ and Vincent had dropped his spoon into the bowl so a little tomato sauce splashed onto the table.
‘Yeah,’ he said, meeting Hugo’s amused gaze with a hostile one of his own. ‘It tastes like shit.’
Hugo’s eyes flared for a moment. He’d got under his skin. Good.
‘Vincent!’ His mother finally seemed awake after monotonously spooning food into her mouth. ‘Don’t be so nasty. You shouldn’t speak to Hugo like that when he’s been good enough to cook for us all!’
‘But it does taste like shit,’ said Vincent evenly.
Hugo surprised him by starting to laugh. Then he did a slow hand clap. ‘No, Rowan,’ he said, ‘it’s all cool. Vincent is at an age when he wants to assert his male presence. It’s like stags, rutting in the wild.’ As he said the word ‘rutting’ he ran a lazy finger along Rowan’s bare arm. Vincent wanted to stab him with a fork, right there and then.
‘I understand,’ said Hugo with fake sincerity. ‘I was once just like you, frustrated and desperate for my real life to begin. It’s normal for you to feel threatened by the older, more dominant presence.’
‘I don’t feel threatened by you,’ said Vincent through clenched teeth. ‘I simply think you’re a total wanker.’
‘Vincent!’ said Rowan, apparently appalled. ‘I’m so sorry, Hugo!’
Hugo was still smiling as he hitched up the sleeve of his long blue poplin shirt and placed his elbow on the table, hand raised.
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we have a little man-to-man tussle and see where we go? It’s good for a boy to let off some steam.’ He waved his tanned hand in the air and grinned. ‘What do you think, Champ? Want to take me on?’
Vincent’s heart was beating so fast he could feel it throb in his ears. There was no way he could beat Hugo at arm wrestling. But he wasn’t going to refuse either. He glanced at his mother, who was chewing her lips as if she wanted to eat herself up from the inside.
‘Yeah,’ he said, flexing his own arm and placing his bent elbow on the table. ‘I’m not scared of you, even though you are twenty years older than me and much stronger.’
Hugo’s eyes flashed then. He was too stupid to understand sarcasm but he knew he was being got at.
‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ said Rowan. ‘Can’t we stop this silly game now?’
‘It’s all right, sweetie,’ said Hugo with an easy smile. ‘I’m not going to hurt him. I’ll go …’
He didn’t reach the end of the sentence because Vincent had already begun, taking him by surprise. Even though he was thin, he had been doing press-ups in the attic through sheer boredom and his wiry arms were getting a little bit stronger.
As Hugo’s face reddened and his fist gradually got closer to the scuffed, Formica table, Vincent felt a beautiful power rush through him. He wished it was Hugo’s stupid, smug, handsome face he was going to grind into the hard table instead. Even though Hugo doesn’t hit his mother (as far as he knows) something about him brings the memories of his father flooding back. That swagger. That sneery air of ‘you can’t hurt me, you little insect’ that makes him feel so small.
Then Hugo simply smiled and before he could even take a breath, Vincent’s arm blazed with pain as it was smashed back onto the table the other way. He’d simply been toying with him; letting him think he was winning.
‘Not bad, Champ,’ said Hugo. That he was a little out of breath wasn’t particularly gratifying.
‘Darling,’ said Celeste in a drawl from the other side of the room, where she was sketching with her legs crossed on a beanbag. ‘Don’t be a prick. He’s just a kid.’
Hugo’s sister Celeste is almost as bad as him. She’s constantly coming up to Rowan and touching her hair or lifting her chin with a finger and saying she wants to paint her. She hasn’t yet, mainly focusing on crap paintings of huge triangles that all look the same to Vincent.
Being called a kid by that ugly whale was the final straw and he’d neatly tipped over the bowl of slop with a finger. Sauce spread like blood across the wooden surface of the table.
‘Oops,’ he said, with a little smile and then walked out of the room.
Rowan had come upstairs to find him straight away and began shouting at him that he wasn’t giving living here a chance.
Vincent told her she had no self-respect. Also, that she was a whore. She slapped him and began to sob. It was a good job she had collapsed into tears because Vincent had come very, very close to hitting her back.
This uncomfortable thought makes him slosh down abruptly so his head is under the water. Think about something else. Harmony. Think about her instead. Think about that silken skin and the short dress. The shock of that moment when she’d put his hand between her legs …
His eyes are squeezed shut and he is very, very close to getting there a couple of minutes later, which is why he doesn’t notice the bathroom door opening.
‘Didn’t your mother warn you you’d go blind?’ The voice is such a shock that Vincent cries out and flails, cracking his elbow painfully on the side of the bath. Water sloshes over the side.
Hugo, in the doorway, is grinning at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says with a conspiratorial wink. ‘It’s bullshit about going blind. Celebrating our own bodies is nothing to be ashamed of.’
‘Get out!’ The yell comes out high-pitched and girly, such is his distress, but that’s the least of his worries. ‘Get out, get out, get out! You fucking bastard!’
Hugo puts up both palms and adopts a wounded expression. ‘Hey, easy, tiger! I didn’t mean to walk in but the door wasn’t locked. You should be more careful.’
As Hugo closes the door and walks away, he’s chuckling to himself.
Bastard.
Vincent bows his head and can’t help the hot tears of humiliation and rage that splash into the now tepid bathwater.