She ran. She ran and ran and ran. The sky had darkened now; it seemed like she had been away from home for days. She ran and ran and ran. She knew if she stopped running she would cry and there would be no stopping it. It would all come out, all that she had reined in for so long, all she thought she had tucked away. Numbness, flatness, nothingness, impossible now; feelings burst in upon her and fought to be felt, understood. Only running prevented it; she sprinted as hard as she could, tearing through the miles, thoughts charging round in circles.
I hate her. I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.
How could she? How could she? How could she? How could she?
Who is she? Who is she? Who is she? Who is she?
What were we? What were we? What were we? What were we?
Questions, unanswerable questions. Questions she, until an hour ago, could have made sense of. Now the questions rolled in one after the other, no space for answers, just questions and more questions and all these slaughtered feelings.
She arrived at the duck pond, gasping, exhausted, and stood with her hands on her knees. They buckled, and she sank slowly to the ground as the tears burst their restraints and came charging forth. A very small sound spilled out from her and she gasped it back in again, then sat back on her haunches, her face in her hands. I don’t understand any of it, she said to herself, but in fact she did understand, she saw it all very clearly now—it was just too much to accept.
Truth. Truths. And each truth a stitch in the tapestry, forming a picture, a complete truth. The lies, the booze, the women, the house with the pink door, the items in the wooden box with a heart on the lid. The stifling, the numbing, the searching. Unravel it all and sew back truths and what you had was a life—her life—as one single scene leading to all of these consequences. It all began at one point: a man—her father—weeping as a door closed and a car sped away. He, watching from the window, then turning and picking her up, holding her as he cried. “You’ll see her again,” he said, but she never did. And through the years a deception had formed to cope with the hurt, telling herself that gone meant dead and dead meant gone, and she’d been so young she almost believed it.
Eventually, drained, she went and sat on the bench and looked up at the blank black window of the flat. The metal mallard, poised over the water, stretched its wings and shone darkly in the cooling of the day. The two litter bins were overflowing, the opposite bench had a crumpled beer can wedged into it, and the smell of damp decay was riper than ever before. Her eyes felt gritty and sore, her head hurt, her face felt strained and uncomfortable. She looked at the water and wondered how deep it was, the perfect ending, a perfect hiding place, a final escape.
“Are you okay?”
She looked to her left; a man in shorts and a T-shirt sat there, two benches away, new moonlight shimmering across the undulations of his arm muscles. He was looking at her.
“Yes,” she said.
“You sure? You don’t look okay.”
“I’m fine.”
“I hate to see a woman crying—it’s like seeing a baby cry, but worse. You can’t just feed or rock a woman okay again. There’s always real pain underneath. I hate it.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk. Sorry if I disturbed you. I just wanted to check.”
She rested her elbows on her knees and said, “I feel sick.”
“It’s the heat,” he replied.
“I have to get away.”
“From the heat? I hear you. You know what they say: A change is as good as a rest.”
“I have to get away from myself.”
“Ah. Destination impossible.” He laughed softly. It was a smooth, deep laugh, the purr of a big cat. “One thing I know, if you run away, your problems follow you.”
“Depends how far you go.”
He came and sat on the bench beside her. She didn’t slide away or move. She didn’t feel capable of reacting. She didn’t mind or care that he was there; he meant nothing. She looked at him and he wasn’t smiling or frowning, he was staring at her lips, her mouth. It was such a stare—so intense—she couldn’t help but stare back at his lips, his mouth. Not a pout, but as if they were plumped, swollen from lots of fighting or kissing. She reached out to touch his arm, then stopped, preferring to believe he perhaps wasn’t real, none of it was real. His neck looked hard, almost solid. The top of a tattoo disappeared beneath his T-shirt. He was reclining with one arm along the back of the bench, behind her; if she sat back, she would fall into an embrace. The impulse was suddenly appealing, just ease back into the arms of a stranger and be held for a while, talked to about nothing as if nothing mattered, held safe in strong arms that would protect her from herself, stay there forever. She needed comfort. She needed comforting. She needed love.
She needed love.
She was about to turn to him and explain it, about to sink back and feel his warmth, rest her head on his chest, but the moment passed. The moment passed, because suddenly he was pressing his cushioned lips against hers, and a tongue as soft as beaten leather was softly caressing hers.
To hell with all of it. To hell with all of them.
A hand came to the back of her head, pressing it slightly, then it clutched her hair as the other took a hold of her jaw and he pulled away, holding her face there, before him, eyes a few inches away as if sizing up a repeat attack. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Do you know that?”
“No.”
“Well, you are.”
To hell with the past, to hell with lies that hurt and truths that burnt and all the want want want for change, for difference. To hell with fighting and resisting and thinking too much or trying not to think. To hell with plans and worries and outcomes and threats. To hell with debts and strangers and the whole lot of it. She stood by the pond in the moonlight and streetlight and half-light, lifted her dress, then climbed on top of him, her back to the pond, the birds, the flat, the world. He unzipped, unleashed, and stared into her eyes. She wrapped her arms around his head and slid down in one direct movement onto him: a rush, a shock, a wrench from the earth, from existence, into a momentum like waves, again and again, and with each rise she felt blank and dark, and with each crash she felt full of need, she felt held, she felt wanted, she felt protected; she felt loved. He was speaking, holding her breasts, trying to kiss her lips, to lick her neck, but she stayed upright, her back arched away from him, and took every moment she could, every feeling, every bit of him, as if she were owed—owed relief, owed forgetfulness, owed a change, a reinvention. To feel. To feel again. Any feeling. Anything.
To hell with all of them.
To hell with Elaine, and Adrienne, and Dom. To hell with teachers and schoolgirls and fat men in grey suits. To hell with her father, the doctor, the self-satisfied parents, to hell with white satin gloves and neat little heels. And to hell with her mother, never there, never there, never there.
“Bite me,” she said.
He gently sucked her neck, her jaw.
“No,” she said. “Bite me.” And she sank her teeth into the hard curve of his ear. He flinched and pulled away. “What are you doing?”
“Bite me, I said. Hit me. Do something.”
“I’m not going to hit you.”
“Then grab me, hold on to me, anything.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed. She felt every part of him harden, and felt his hands dig into her back. She bent down and kissed him, wanting his tongue, his lips, all of him, now. For this brief moment, nothing mattered; there were only actions, never consequences.
But then, one sound. One word: “Frances?”
There in the entrance to the duck pond, between the two high hedges, stood Elaine.
Her head shaking slightly, saying, “No, no, no,” a hand in her hair, the other to her mouth. Shorts, shirt, barefoot. But she was not mad, and she was not hallucinating: She looked, clear-eyed, and saw. She saw everything.
Then she turned and ran.
“Shit!” Frances tried to clamber off. The man half helped her, half tucked himself in, looking over at the gap in the hedge, saying, “What the hell? Who was that?”
“Shit,” Frances said again. She tripped, fell over, clambered up again, then shouted, “Elaine!” and sprinted after her.
There was no sight of her in the street, no sign of anyone. Frances ran to the entrance of the flats, then tore up the steps, two at a time, the sound of her feet echoing up the building. The front door was open to blackness. She stepped quietly into the eeriness. Only shapes were visible, the outlines of boxes and objects and the back of the sofa. The stench, like some sort of horror, crept inside her. Then she heard a loud thudding sound coming from the living room.
“Elaine?” she said. “Elaine?”
She turned the light on.
Over by the window, Elaine was in a low squat, striking something against the floor, rising it up over her head and hitting again and again. Frances slowly approached around the sofa but Elaine did not stop, even as she looked up, shark-eyed, at Frances. She kept on striking and smashing.
The wooden box, and all its contents, ripped or broken or shredded. Elaine picked up a handful of it, and tossed it out the open window.
“No!” Frances leapt forwards.
Elaine picked up the cactus on the windowsill, spun, and hurled it at Frances as hard as she could. It smacked into her temple before colliding with the toaster. Elaine rushed at her, fists pummelling, as Frances clutched her head and tried to grab the beating arms. “Elaine, stop, please, calm down.”
“You fucking lying bitch!”
She paused a moment and sobbed. “You’re a lying bitch,” she said, quieter, then went back to the shattered box and broken items on the floor and continued throwing them out the window. “You think I didn’t know? You think I didn’t know about all this, didn’t know what it was? Your little box of souvenirs—do you think I’m stupid?”
Frances bent over and reached out into a tangle of arms—Elaine’s smashing, hers grabbing—as she snatched at a piece of paper on the floor. “Please, not that,” Frances begged. “Please, Elaine. Please.”
Elaine swiped up the paper and read it. “Who the fuck is Anne?”
“Please give it to me.”
“Some other girlfriend you’re not over? Someone else you’re stalking? Some other fuck-buddy? How could I have ever trusted you?”
“No, you don’t understand. Please. Please give it to me.”
There came a banging on the door but neither heard it.
“You’re damn right I don’t understand. What the fuck has been going on? Who was that guy and what’s happened here and who the hell are you? Who the hell are you?”
“Please, Elaine, it’s not what you think.” She reached for the paper but Elaine held it away. “My father gave that to me. Please. Please.”
“What about that out there? Is that what I think? Because I think that was you riding some dude’s prick round the corner from our house whilst I was sick in bed and didn’t know where the fuck you were or what the fuck has happened here. I woke up to find the house looking like we’ve been robbed and you nowhere in sight. I can’t find my phone, the place is dark—look at it. I don’t even know what fucking day it is. Then I look outside and see you. And him.” Her face dropped. Her hands dropped. The paper fell to the floor.
The pounding at the door came again, persistent, a rhythmic bang, bang, bang.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It wasn’t about you.”
“It never fucking is, is it. It never has been. Nothing is ever about me. I love you, but that doesn’t matter, because you don’t love me. You love her. It’s always her. When we have sex and you don’t look at me, it’s her. When you say ‘I love you,’ it’s her. When you kiss me, it’s her. All this stuff, here, in this box, this bunch of rotten, faded souvenirs, did you think I didn’t know? Do you think I’m stupid? I know you don’t want me. I get it, okay,” then she screamed, “I always have! But why him, out there? Will anyone do? Anyone who isn’t her—it doesn’t make a difference to you, does it? If you can’t have her, then we’re all the same.”
“No, that isn’t it, I promise you.”
“You promise! Do you even fucking hear yourself? Promise?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Elaine, I can explain—”
But she didn’t get the chance to. Suddenly, the door to the flat burst open and Dom, Betty, and three other women stormed into the flat, rushing upon them. Dom saw Frances immediately, and before she could move, he strode straight up to her, grabbed her by the neck, and pushed her up against the wall by the window. Frances, too stunned to move, dangled there, her hands grappling at his arms, looking at the face she once knew, the person she thought she knew, transformed into two frozen eyes, a hand crushing her windpipe, and a voice muttering, “I fucking warned you.”
The women had grabbed hold of Elaine, who grappled and kicked and yelled, “What the hell is this?”
“Tell her,” Dom said to Frances, his breath full of smoke. “Tell her what this is.”
“I don’t have it,” Frances gasped. “Please. Please don’t.”
“I know you haven’t got it, you idiot—we haven’t exactly popped round for tea.”
“Please, don’t hurt her—she’s nothing to do with it, she doesn’t know anything about it.”
“I can see that.”
“Got what?” Elaine shouted. The women had wrangled her into the armchair, where she now sat, unrestrained, as one of the Ladies held a knife out before her and said, “Oi. Keep it down.”
“Your lady friend owes me money,” Dom said. His nose was so close Frances could see each pore. She tried to swallow, but couldn’t. A pressure behind her eyes and ears was building, and as she choked she said again, “Please.”
“She’s owed me it for a while now,” he continued, “and I’m sick of waiting. But she knows I don’t do the dirty work where women are involved, which is why I’ve brought my own lady friends with me.” Frances blinked pleadingly. Then she watched as Betty stood up and opened her bag.
Shorter than Frances, slimmer than Frances, it made no difference; she reached in her bag and pulled out her curling tongs, then pointed beside the television and said, “I see a socket. That’s handy.”
“No, please.”
“Or”—Betty walked up beside Dom and stared into Frances’ watering eyes—“maybe I’ll have some fun with her girlfriend and she can watch. What do you think, Dom?”
Dom examined the whole of Frances’ face, then said, “Yeah. Go on.”
Frances could barely breathe, could hardly see. She managed to squeak one desperate word, barely audible in the room: “No.” She watched as Betty plugged in her tongs and the two other women tackled Elaine to the ground, face down.
“How much money?” Elaine yelled.
“Shut it,” Betty snarled.
“Please! How much money? I have money. I have money. I do.”
“Two thousand and fifty” said Dom.
“I have that. I have it. I have it. I have it.”
Betty waved her tongs around and said, “She’s bullshitting you.”
“I’m not. I promise. I have it. I can get it.”
“Where is it?” Dom said.
“In there. In my room. I can get it.”
He motioned for the Ladies to move. They all watched as Elaine stood up and ran into the bedroom. Through blurred vision Frances saw Elaine return with Edwin the Furby in her hands. She stood there before them and popped his head off, then pulled out two rolls of cash and a few extra notes.
“There.” She held it out to him.
He looked at it, released Frances, and flicked through it. “You’ve been lucky,” he said to Frances. Then, grinning, he winked at her and said, “No hard feelings.”
The front door swung off its hinges. Betty could be heard cackling and squealing up the street. Frances fell onto the floor, and Elaine slumped on the arm of the sofa. They both looked, dazed, before them. Elaine didn’t move as Frances gasped and coughed and clutched her neck.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Elaine said. “It’s only money. You only had to ask. You only ever had to ask.”
They sat amongst the debris of the flat, Frances with an ice pack to her bleeding temple, bruises appearing on the side of her neck, and they both stared mutely ahead, sipping beer.
“I guess I understand,” Elaine said. “Him, I mean. A dealer, right? Should have guessed, should have seen it coming ages ago. I know what you get up to at night. And I’m not stupid.” She sighed. “You needed money. You know, I thought at the time it seemed a bit out of the blue, asking me to move in. But, well, I loved you, so…”
Frances didn’t say anything, just sipped her drink.
“I didn’t set up the payment because I wanted to propose to you on Friday, see what you said, then I was going to sort it out Saturday if you said yes.” She looked down at the ring still on Frances’ finger and said, “Well, I guess I did half my plan, eh.”
Frances placed the empty beer bottle on the floor.
“The funny thing is,” Elaine said, “I just wanted to be like her, for you. I bought champagne because you said she liked it. I bought cookery books to fill the gaps. We went to Camden because you said that’s where she liked to go. I’ve tried to ignore all the warning signs, tried to play happy, made myself sing and act happy, hoping it would all work out.
“I thought with enough love and sex and affection you might grow to love me back, but it would never have worked because you just use people, Frances. To numb, to get what you want, to keep ticking over in some sort of half-life, because you’re not alive, not really. You’re on hold, and we’re all just helping to keep you there.”
Frances looked down at the battered box and its contents, now indistinguishable from one another, just shadowy shapes on the floor. She picked the crumpled piece of paper up and looked at it. Then Elaine said, “You’ve got to sort it out, the pain that’s working away in the background. Her.”
“Adrienne?”
“No, for God’s sake, your mother. You need to deal with it, accept it, find a better way to cope. Say a prayer, write her a letter, see a shrink, whatever, say your piece to find some peace. Because she’s tied up in everything you do. She dictates everything you do. Until that’s put to rest, you’ll always be the hurt little kid wanting its mother.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“I know. But it’s true.”
Frances nodded and said, “I know. It’s turning me into a monster.”
Elaine tutted. “Not a monster. Don’t exaggerate. You always exaggerate. You’re not as bad a person as you think you are, you’re just damaged. So’s everyone. That’s life. Damage control.”
And Frances saw, right there, a chance to be good. She found the gear, and she went for it. She opened herself another beer, then set it on the kitchen worktop and braced herself to do something completely new. She was going to tell the truth. She was going to confess.
“What the fuck are you wearing?” Elaine said.
Leave it all behind, and face the truth: Frances told her.
She told Elaine everything.