By the end of my first year at the pub the kids had got into the habit of stopping there on the way to the park to see if I was coming out, angling after some free booze most likely. The lads would be standing there, trackied and capped and scruffy as hell, and Chrissy would appear at the back door with a cig, even though there was no reason for her to go outside for a smoke. She’d be leaning against the doorframe with her dressing gown half open in the middle of the day, her thighs bared, hankering for the flush of pink creeping out from the collars of their sports jackets, those teenage-boy stares proof to her that she was worth something. All right, lads, she’d smirk as I’d slide past her, ignoring the urge to fling my arms around her neck and kiss her cheek every time I left, my heart breaking for the way she was.
For a time, it seemed as though Barry and all the things he’d given Chrissy—the jewelry, the pub, the apartment—had anchored her. But after a while it was like the weight of them became too much and that wispiness came back, except with more lostness than before. Sometimes it felt like Chrissy had become a ghost of herself, an avatar, putting on a front while inside her head she escaped.
It was just small things at first. The way her eyes would cloud over whenever Barry leaned across the bar, droning out some long-winded story we’d all heard a hundred times before. The beat of a nerve in her jaw when he’d grab her around the waist and pull her close to him, showing her off to the locals: look what I’ve got, look what’s mine. The way she seemed to be searching for a reason to leave the room every time he walked in.
I’d see her sometimes sitting at the bar, a drink in one hand and a cig in the other, surrounded by people. And she’d be smiling, laughing, flirting till the cows came home mostly. But I’d catch this look, this strange sort of blankness in her eyes, like her soul had poured out of them. Sometimes she’d notice me watching her and for a fleeting second she’d look almost ashamed, as though I’d caught her out. Then it would be gone, she’d look away, flash that smile, throw herself back into it all, so that I’d be left to wonder if I’d imagined it. If that absence, that hollowness, was simply a reflection of myself.
I didn’t understand the things Chrissy got up to when I was a kid, just thought it was part of being a grown-up. I knew she partied hard in the years before we moved to the pub, knew what the comedown train looked like when it hit her in the days that followed. There was none of that in our first year living with Barry. She’d started to look normal. Healthy, even. When she got dressed, the lines of the fabric would skim against the curves of her flesh instead of hanging from her, like they were still strung up on their metal coat hangers in Barry’s cavernous wardrobes. The dark shadows under her eyes lessened, her hair came back to life. But by our second winter at the pub, that familiar look had crept back in. The sallowness, the skinniness, the jitter in her jaw. Barry noticed it too, put it down to stress, he said, and she nodded without looking at him, pulled out another cig and lit it with her shaking hand.
What you got to be stressed about then? I asked her one day, when the pair of us were on our own up in the apartment. Chrissy laughed lightly, like we were in on it together, rummaging through her handbag without meeting my eye. Really, though, I said. What’s on yer mind?
She looked at me properly then, trying to read my expression, then sighed, slamming her purse on the table. What you gettin at?
I looked away, bit down on the inside of my cheek, but she stalked over to where I sat, grabbed the top of my arm tight for a second and then drew her hand back as though I had scalded her.
You don’t know a thing, d’you know that? You at yer fancy school, in yer fancy uniform with all them posh nobheads bangin on about all the things you could be—
I never asked to go to that school, I yelled, angrier than I’d realized. Chrissy guffawed.
See? That’s exactly what I mean. You get all this, she waved her hand around the apartment, her face contorted in fury. All this on a fuckin plate. And you can’t even see it. Can’t even see how we got here, why we got here. You know fuck-all. You think you do, but you don’t. You’ve got no idea what it’s like.
What’s that s’posed to mean?
It means, she said, then paused, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. It means that sometimes I just need to take the edge off.
I didn’t look up but I heard her walk out, heard the slam of the door and her feet on the stairs, running back down to the safety of the bar.
Chrissy stopped hiding it from me so much after that. I wasn’t sure if it was because she saw me as complicit, or if she was doing it out of spite. I’d catch her nipping upstairs from the bar on a Friday night, her jaw grinding as she tapped the plastic baggy over the rim of her glass, winking at me or avoiding my eyes altogether, depending on how far gone she already was.
What is it? Danny asked me when I told him. We were lying on the sofa in the apartment, taking it in turns to play songs on Barry’s stereo. Danny had brought me round a snide copy of a Sade CD that he’d got off one of Denz’s mates, said it was full of soppy shite that he bet was right up my alley, and he was right.
Speed. Phet. Whatever she can get, I bet.
He’d shaken his head slowly. That’s bad, man. All chemical shit. That’s the stuff that messes you up, it int like green. That shit’ll put you in t’ground.
I didn’t say anything to that, pressed repeat on the stereo.