I giggle as we walk the short way from the alcove to The Mansion. I can’t get over the way Banks calls it a house. It looks even worse in the cold half-light, even with the entrance partly blocked with cardboard. It smells of pee and there are empty cans, a couple of mouldy looking blankets and a Chinese food carton in one corner. Banks steers me to some broken car seats as if they were a couch in a palace. I fall onto one of them and try not to close my eyes, because every time I do, it feels like the world is trying a judo throw on me.
Banks stands for a long moment and I think he’s changed his mind, but he sits at last and rests his head on one hand. The hand is dirty even in the dim light, with that oily dirt that means it’s been a while since he washed it. As always, there’s the reek of alcohol and cigarettes but I don’t mind it. I only wish I could clear my head a little.
After a time, Banks starts mumbling to himself and every so often he looks up and stares off to his left, as if someone just said something irritating. A man’s head appears at the doorway, peers over the cardboard, then disappears from view as quickly as it came. I know how it must look – me and Banks, here together. He’s just what people say he is: ‘All wrong for me’. Too old, too weird, too dirty, too altogether nasty. Yet here I am, reaching for the warmth of his hand while he mumbles into his stubble about being followed, about a baby called Danny-Jack and about some stone he’s looking for. I fall into a sort of sleep – a heaviness where my head bobs gently like a boat on the tide, and the next time I look up, the dark has crept across the entrance as quietly as an animal. The sea is sighing away somewhere under the sky, and it begins to feel like we’ve been here for ever.
Do I really live in a house up in the town, with three storeys and an antique shop in the bottom? I can imagine Mum right now, putting aubergines in the oven, stopping to pour a glass of wine now that we can keep it in the house again, or perhaps even filling in a crossword clue here or there. She’ll be glancing at the clock, wondering where I am.
‘I used to like knowing Mum might be worried,’ I say into the quiet. ‘I thought she didn’t care if I was there or not.’
‘She cared…’ Banks has his face turned towards me – a vague blob in the darkness. A light from outside is picking out golden streaks at the edges of his hair, and his breath blows on me with the alcohol smell. Whatever it was I drank stirs in my guts in a kind of warning. He’s twirling my fingers between his now, and then he looks down and goes still – staring, as if he’s forgotten what fingers are. He starts to lift my hand up towards his face, then suddenly drops it and turns his body away from me.
‘You should go home,’ he mutters. ‘Your mummy will be worried…’
‘Don’t talk like I’m some kid!’ I shoot back at him. ‘What’s up with you?’
Banks gets up – a huge figure looming over me – the hair from his bent head brushing my cheek. ‘You’re a kid!’ he tells me. ‘A stupid – little – girl. Go home! Please go home!’
Something about the way he’s standing, the way he’s breathing makes me get up. We stand together – close – his breath warm on my cheek. My head feels fuzzy, as if it’s gently expanding, and for a crazy moment I wish more than anything in the world that he’d kiss me. My hand goes out and he catches hold of it, pulling me forward, and I go with it – until I get really close and see the look in his eyes. I step back then, but he doesn’t let go.
‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Banks! Let go … ’
He doesn’t seem to hear. He’s saying my name, and his hand clutches mine so hard it hurts. His other hand, wrapped round my back, is pulling me forward and I step sideways, catch my foot in the strut of the seat and fall, one hand crashing hard into the concrete floor.
‘You stink,’ I shout at him. ‘I don’t want to see you any more!’ Then I’m casting around in the darkness for the gap in the entrance, amazed that I’ve been happy to sit there next to him – not just now, but for all these weeks.
I snatch at the cardboard, tear it aside and stumble onto the forecourt. As soon as I get into the light, I run. Behind me, someone shouts, but I couldn’t care. He’s a dirty drunk; he’s disgusting. My breath is ragged and I’m saying things out loud like some kind of loony. I slow down because I’m getting up among people, but I can’t stop rubbing, rubbing, rubbing at my hands and face and the backs of my thighs where they’d touched the smelly old seat. Everything is dirty!
When I reach our street, the houses are all shining with light. There’s a glow spilling from the windows onto the gardens opposite. A woman in a wax jacket is walking a little dog, and I can see Matt through the window opposite, holding a bottle of wine to the light, turning it to read the label.
I can’t wait to get indoors. I wrestle the key into the lock, like the devil is after me, then stand for a moment in the hallway while the warmth drops round me, welcoming me home as if I’ve been gone for a long, long time.
The scent of cooking comes from the kitchen; Mum and Dad are in there together and they stop talking immediately. Mum draws the door open and her face relaxes.
‘Coo – there you are. We were worried…’
‘It’s all right,’ I smile. ‘I was just looking in the late shops. I think I’ll have a bath if that’s okay.’
Sitting in the warm water, steam saturating the air, I scrub at my fingers. Tears fall with the weight of blood into the water, and I speak out loud to my brother.
‘Why? Why did you want to give all this up? Why did you have to ruin it for everyone? Why did you die?’
My body in the water looks like dead flesh, whiter than white. I have an image of Banks’ dirty hand running up my leg, and it doesn’t seem disgusting to me any more. I know it’s the alcohol still swimming through me, but I’m scared. I think I might be making a noise, but I don’t know that either.
A board creaks outside, and it might be a moment later or half an hour. It’s Mum going up to my room. She comes back past and speaks through the door.
‘Dinner will be ready soon. I left your dressing gown on the bed for you… don’t be long will you?’
I think of aubergines lying in Mum’s antique serving bowl, slushed and purple like a bruise, and suddenly I’m quite sure I’m going to be sick.