What you mopin about like such a misery fer? he snarled.
I’d been avoiding Ste. Despite how messed up I’d been getting, I hadn’t let him put his hands on me since the day Danny had dropped my book off at the hotel.
What d’you want? I muttered, uncurling my fingers from a cup of long-cold tea.
He took a step toward me. Just come to see if you were finished hankerin after that Danny yet.
I edged my chair toward the wall, rubbing the heaviness from the corners of my eyes. Something in the way Ste was looking at me made me nervous.
Come on, get yer shit together, he said tersely. I’m off out fer a drink with Gary—you can come.
Nah, I’m all right.
Come on. It’ll be a laugh.
I’m poorly, Ste. I feel like shit.
He stepped forward, wrenching at my arm. Get up, yer daft bitch.
Gary was already in the car when we got there. I didn’t bother asking where we were going, knew they wouldn’t answer me. We drove the back way, barely passing another car until we hit Leeds and pulled up outside a derelict cluster of tower blocks. Ste got out and I closed my eyes, sank back into the headrest, hoped that maybe I’d be able to fall asleep.
Wakey-wakey!
I hadn’t realized Gary was still there, leering at me from the passenger seat. I turned my face away, hated to be alone with him, but he reached backward, grabbed the inside of my thigh with his long fingers, making me yelp out in pain, and shock.
He laughed. Relax, girly. Me and Ste’ll soon have you feelin better.
It was a while before Ste reappeared. The two of them strode ahead of me and I skulked a few feet behind, like a child. At the top of the street stood a rundown old pub that reminded me of being a kid in the flats. Metal bars were fixed across the two lower windows, a grubby flag of St. George pinned up to one of them.
Inside it was dark, a scrawny lad in a worn-out tracksuit playing on the nudgies and an old bloke half asleep on the bar. I followed Ste and Gary to a table in the corner next to a window covered in a layer of white scum, distorting the view outside so that it looked like someone had wiped their palm across a chalk drawing. Ste went to the bar without asking what I wanted, came back and pushed a glass of warm, sour wine across the table at me. I fiddled with the beer mat, tearing it into shreds and dropping them onto the dirty carpet.
A thank-you might be nice.
Ta, I mumbled. The two of them got up to play pool and I hoped perhaps they’d leave me alone for a bit. I sipped the wine slowly, but before I could finish it, there was another drink in front of me, and then another and another. Malibu and Cokes, bottles filled with bubblegum fizz, a bright-red shot that made me gag just from the smell.
I told you we’d have a laugh tonight. Ste grinned. I smiled at him tightly as Gary handed me a pool cue.
Come on then. Let’s see what all them years livin at the boozer did for yer.
I didn’t want to move, but I could tell by his face he wasn’t going to let it go and so I stood, stumbling slightly. We played and I lost, knew I was drunk by then. I could nail almost anyone at pool. And then we were outside, round the back with a spliff.
We’re goin now, Ste was saying.
Where?
The hotel—where d’you think? We’ll have a little party, how does that sound?
I shook my head. Nah, nah. I don’t want to.
The two of them laughed, but I didn’t know what was funny.
By the time we got back it was pitch-black. I lurched out of the car, a wave of nausea washing over me, sat down on the tarmac of the car park. Ste tried to make me stand but I pushed him away, elbowing him in the shin hard enough for him to jump back, swear, call me a silly slut.
We ended up in Gary’s office and I remember looking down, seeing that I had a mug in my hand, but it was empty and I wasn’t sure if I’d drunk from it or if it had never been full. There was music playing and Ste and Gary were bent over the desk, sniffing lines of something, waving the rolled-up note in my direction. The room wouldn’t stay still, and I had the sense somehow that Danny was there, that I was saying his name, but I don’t know whether anything came out of my mouth or if it was just in my head, and when I looked at Gary and Ste again, I saw they were laughing.
I tried to bring their features into focus but something had happened to my eyes, my ears. I brought the mug to my lips again, then remembered it was empty, but I’d got it wrong somehow because in fact it was full, and it wasn’t a mug but a plastic cup. There was a cigarette between my fingers, or maybe something else, and I suddenly felt cold. Only then did I realize I didn’t have any clothes on. I must have tried to stand, because the next thing I knew I was on my knees on the floor, someone’s hands on my back.
You’ve always been a lively one, haven’t yer?
You might not be as fit as yer mam, but you’re plenty like her in other ways.
Come on then, come on, there’s a good girl, that’s it, that’s it.
And then I am on the ground, and Gary is above me, his features all stretched out and distorted, like the Joker. He is flicking water in my face and I am trying to sit up, and now Ste is there too and there is a weight on me, in me, pressing me down, and then there is no more laughing but there is hot breath and hands and heat and spit and I am back there, on my back at Devil’s Claw, and I want them to stop but I don’t have the words and I asked for this and I led them on and at some point there is no more music, no more stench of sweat and bodies, and when I wake up again the next morning I am alone and I know. I know I let it happen again.