In those last weeks I wandered around in a daze, trying not to think about where we’d live as I threw our belongings into plastic bin liners, a sense of déjà vu flitting at the back of my mind. I was up in the bedroom, staring into space, when Danny came in with the letter.
This were fer you. In that pile at the bottom of the stairs.
I glanced at it, confused. It seemed familiar somehow, although I couldn’t quite place why. The seal peeled open without ripping the envelope, the letter inside a thick, creamy stock that only ever comes with good news. My eyes scanned over the words and I sat down on the bed with a thud. It’s from the paper, I said quietly.
Danny took a step closer. What does it say?
It says…it says I came third. Highly commended. Says they’d like to publish me poem in t’book. There’s an awards ceremony, they want to present summat to me onstage. Take a picture that they can put in there, next to me name.
I looked up at Danny, full of hope. The old us would have been jumping up and down on the bed together at that news. We’d have gone straight to the offie and got ourselves a bottle of fizzy wine to celebrate, giddy at the thought of a fancy night out, a free dinner, my picture in a book, right there, next to my name. But Danny just frowned at me.
When is it?
March twentieth.
That were two weeks ago, Neef.
Were it?
Yeah. It were.
Oh, I said. Oh. I blinked twice, trying to focus. Well. It don’t matter. I’ll still be in t’book, still have me name in there.
Mmm, Danny said flatly. Yeah.
The prospect of our eviction hung in the air like a ghoul, an unspoken fact that neither of us dared look in the eye until it was only a few days away.
Where will we take our stuff? I said to Danny as I watched him drag a battered suitcase to the bottom of the stairs. He kept his back to me, knelt down and started fiddling with the lock, muttered something I couldn’t make out.
What?
I said…He paused. I said mebbe we should do our own thing fer a bit.
I frowned, confused. Our own thing like what?
Like…I dunno. You could stay at the pub fer a while and I’ll…I’ll just sort meself out.
He stood, walked past me toward the kitchen, but still he wouldn’t look at me, opening a cupboard, closing it again. Sliding out a drawer. I wanted to go to him, to take his face in my hands and make him look at me, but my feet kept me still, rooted to the spot. I thought we were goin to see Lewis, I said quietly.
Danny rolled his eyes with a sigh, then picked up a discarded bin bag from the floor, started chucking things in it randomly.
Danny, I tried again, but he was already halfway out of the room.
I kept waiting for him to tell me he hadn’t meant it, that he hadn’t been thinking straight. But the words never came, his eyes never meeting mine. We shared a bed, still, but always his back would be turned to me, unyielding as I pawed at him.
Denz turned up at the house the morning before our final day. I shouldn’t have been surprised, yet the sight of him floored me. I looked at Danny, my eyes full of accusation, and for once he looked back.
Where else could I have gone, Neef?
Fuck you, I said to him. Fuck you.
I ran upstairs then, sat on the edge of the bed listening to the two of them load Danny’s things into the boot of Denz’s car. At the sound of the engine starting, bile rose up in my throat, but within seconds it had cut again. Somewhere a door slammed, Danny’s footsteps on the stairs. When I looked up, he was standing there, watching me.
In that moment, all of it, everything fell away and we were two kids again, twelve and thirteen, our eyes locking through the open window of a beat-up old BMW, an understanding of each other that went beyond words. Remember? I wanted to say to him. Remember us? Wishing, willing him to cover the ground between us, to fix it, to put it all back together again.
I turned from him. Just go.
Danny stayed where he was for a few seconds longer, but then I heard the door close behind him, footsteps descending, the engine coming back to life. I drew the blinds across the window, couldn’t bear to watch him climb into the passenger seat. But even in the darkness with my eyes squeezed shut, I could see him, his every movement so familiar to me.
I stayed there on the bed for a long time, digging my nails into the soft flesh of my inner arm. And then on impulse I stood, snatched up every one of my notebooks and threw them into one of the leftover bin liners. Pulling on a pair of trainers, I paced down to the river, the weight of my words a burden in my arms. When I reached the bridge, I tipped the contents out into the water, ignoring the shouts and yells of disgruntled passersby, letting every single one of my poems and stories wash away. After that I walked over to Ste’s, told him to come over to Mary’s that night, to bring everyone he knew. We’d go out with a bang, have a party. A leaving do, I called it, the phrase making me think of another time, another life. An empty cigarette pack blowing across a car park, Chrissy dancing to a beat no one else could hear and, again, that feeling. Of me becoming her.
They started turning up before it had even got dark, familiar faces at first, kids from round and about. All I could think of was getting wasted, getting so fucked up that I’d forget everything, all of it. I wasn’t interested in talking to anyone, went outside on my own, sank down against the side wall next to the bins. Two girls were round the back, chatting on while one of them went for a piss behind a tree.
I had a bit of a thing with him, years back, one of them was saying. He weren’t bad-lookin then. If yer into that sorta thing.
Proper thick, though, her mate joined in, rustling her knickers back up her legs. Couldn’t even write his own name, someone told me.
Yeah, but she weren’t much better. Both right skanky. Been on and off with him since they were kids, pretty much.
Bet he were puttin it about still. He were a dirty bastard like that.
Terrible what he were doin to his poor nana, as well. After she raised him all them years. Took advantage of her, I heard. All a bit off how she died so fast, weren’t it?
I know. Me mum said the same thing happened with his mum years ago—summat to do with his dad apparently, big gangster-type fella from t’wrong ender Leeds. No wonder Danny turned out like that.
Scum, really. Mucky scum—
As they walked back toward the house, one of them glanced in my direction, her eyes bulging like a fish at the sight of me. All right, Neef? She smiled, the pair of them exchanging a look they thought I didn’t see.
All right, I said, helping myself to a cig from the packet she shook at me.
Sorry to hear about you and Danny.
Are yer?
Lucky escape, if you ask me.
I didn’t.
The other girl standing beside her sucked her lips in between her teeth, and I felt their eyes follow me as I stood up and made my way back inside the house. Fuck you, I thought. Fuck all of you. I burrowed into my purse, pulled out another pill, gulped it down with a can of something I was clutching in my hand. There were more people now, throngs of people everywhere, all of them feeling unfamiliar to me, spilling into the garden and the pavement out the front as I moved through the house. Sharp eyes and twisted smiles and faces that made the acid rise to my throat.
The police showed up early on, apparently. It had been a warning, telling us to shut off the music, scaring away the few people who cared about getting into trouble. I didn’t see them, too busy getting out of it to notice, chemicals and alcohol coursing through my veins, the music pulsating in my face, my eyelids, doing whatever I could to blot out my ability to feel. Maybe it was just a bad pill or maybe it was everything that was going on, but I remember the jarring uneasiness, the sense of unrest building, of wanting so much to be near Danny, wanting him to pull it all back together again. At some point I lost my head, not knowing what was real and what wasn’t anymore. I searched for the shape of Danny in the kitchen, the front room, pushing past the mob toward the stairs only to find them overflowing with limbs, bodies, mouths pressed against mouths so that I had to force my way through, squeezing myself flat against the wall and then under an arm, over a leg, until eventually I found space, air, an empty square at the top of the stairs. And yet still I had the feeling of being unable to breathe.
All of a sudden there was a flurry of activity and I felt something thrust against my lower back so that my legs buckled, and then an elbow or perhaps a knee in my temple. I clawed at the wall, trying to stand. Someone was yelling, dragging at my wrist, then a realization that they had the wrong hand, the wrong arm.
I ended up back in the front room, pushing and elbowing my way in. There was a fight, or maybe a few different ones, it was hard to tell. One of the kitchen windows had been put through, Mary’s old coffee table upended on the floor. A lad with a shaved head had a younger kid pinned up against the wall, although most of the action seemed to have cleared out into the garden now. Ste was on the grass, the sinews in his neck popping, yelling, fists swinging. From somewhere I heard glass splintering, a revving of engines and then police cars pulling up outside the house, crowds of kids scattering, jumping over walls, under hedges, sprinting through neighbors’ gardens and out of sight. The officers swooped in and down on the remaining gaggles, scooping up those too out of it to make a quick enough getaway, pulling apart others who had been so absorbed in the brawl that they hadn’t heard the sirens cutting through the night sky. I was calling Danny’s name into the darkness and the next thing I knew Ste was dragging me by the elbow, pulling me away from the house and into the back of a car.
Danny’s not here, Neef, what you on about? Danny’s not here.
I yelled at him to get off me, reaching for the door handle, but he was in my way, blocking my arm.
The lad driving the car, Lee I think he was called, took us to a terrace a couple of streets away, his sister’s place, he said. She opened the door in her dressing gown, her hair scraped back from her face and her eyes heavy with sleep. For a minute I thought she wouldn’t let us in, but then she did, giving us an earful about the police all over the estate tonight and how she didn’t want trouble coming to her door.
I recognize you, she said, thrusting her chin at me. You’re the lass that used to live down at the Lion, aren’t yer? I gave a half nod and looked away, but not before I saw her shake her head, grimace in disgust. You best be gone by the time I wake up, the lot of yer.
Ste and Lee fell asleep on the sofa, but I stayed awake until it was light, then crept back to Mary’s house. I could see from the other side of the street that it was trashed. Someone had kicked one of the panels in the front door so hard that the wood had cracked and splintered, and there were windows broken at the front and back of the house. Drops of blood and a pool of vomit had congealed on the pavement outside, and out in the garden piles of beer cans and cider-bottle bongs lay abandoned among the souls of Danny’s plants.
The back door was still open. My feet stuck to the floor as I made my way through the debris of the rooms, the surfaces wet with spilled drinks, the sofa cushions speckled with hot rock burns. I crept up the stairs, following the tracks of muddy footprints trampled into the carpets. Pushed the door of Mary’s room open.
For a long time I just stood there in the doorway trying to sense her, to feel her. But the room smelt of damp, a light-gray mold crawling up the corners of the walls, the edges of the curtains punctured by the teeth of hungry moths. I took a step back, pulling the door closed. There was nothing of Mary there anymore. Nothing of him or me.