Through the mottled bathroom window, Shelley watched the moon glowing in the blackness of the sky. She heard her name being shouted. She crouched on the floor, bundling her drug paraphernalia into her handbag, then she rushed downstairs.
“He’s awake.” Angel stood at the top of the stairs that led down to the cellar. She looked well rested. Shelley wondered how she’d been able to sleep on a grimy mattress.
“I’ll be one minute.” Shelley darted into the lounge, suddenly remembering that she’d forgotten to unplug her curling tongs earlier. They must have been on for a couple of hours and, as there was no fire, she worried they might have broken.
After dumping her handbag, she unplugged the tongs. They were steaming. Holding the handle low down to eschew the heat, she walked with her arm outstretched as she carried them to the cellar.
“Are you all right?” Nicole squeezed Shelley’s free hand as she entered the dark room.
Shelley nodded. Of course, she wasn’t all-fucking-right, but at least she was less wrong than last night.
“Do you want this?” Tara held out a torch.
“Will you hold it for me?” Shelley asked.
Tara shone her torch on the rapist. Under the stream of light, his clingfilm-encased body glistened. The sound system in Shelley’s head switched on REM - Shiny Happy People. The mental recording of last night’s rape that had been running on a loop ceased. She felt as though some of the fleas on her skin had fled.
When she got closer, she saw the purpleness of his swollen face and the patches of dried blood that had formed under the plastic. He could have been any of the men that had raped her, but there was only one she would have traded him for – her mother’s ex-boyfriend.
She concentrated on the lyrics of the song – happy, happy – and pumped up the volume. After a minute had passed, the music had the desired effect of drowning out the rerun of another rape, which was attempting an infiltration of her mind.
By his side, she stooped and put her mouth next to his clingfilm-covered ear. “I’ve got something for you... It’s just a little thing, to say thank you for everything you’ve done to me.”
The music in her head was disturbed as the bull in the slaughterhouse bellowed. The cocoon she’d created muffled the noise. As she heard him cough, she hoped he’d be sick. He could experience the feeling of suffocation he’d imposed on her.
“I bet you’re always the giver, aren’t you? Well, I like things to be fair... fair and equal. So it’s only right that you have your turn now. This is your turn to receive.” Shelley pressed the top of the fiery, cylindrical tongs against his ear.
He howled, floundering on the concrete floor. Tara, Angel and Nicole rolled him flat onto his stomach and held him down while Shelley seared a hole with the tongs through the plastic coating on his arse. The smell of dead rat commingled with the fumes from the singeing clingfilm. When the dancing smoke had dispersed in the air, she inserted the tongs. He cried like a man on fire.
Shelley laughed. Then she said matter-of-factly, “This might hurt a little. Hopefully a lot, and it’s exactly what a sadistic cunt like you deserves. Do you recognise my friends?”
He shook his head, bawling inside his plastic shroud.
“You raped two of them. You can’t remember? It’s a slow death, and that’s what you’re gonna have.” Shelley wrenched the tongs, showing no mercy to his smothered cries. “Is that what I wanted, then? That’s what you think – that I wanted that? Well I think... I think you want this. You really fucking want it, you motherfucking, twisted, evil cunt.”
Screaming, he squirmed on the floor. With Nicole and Tara sat on his back, and Angel holding down his legs, he wasn’t going anywhere. Now he knew how it felt to be violated, powerless, unable to escape.
“Have I killed him already?” Shelley said, noticing he was silent and no longer moving. She rested the tongs on the floor and helped her friends flip him onto his back.
“He’s alive. Look, his chest’s moving,” Angel said.
“That’s a shame.” Tara booted him in the groin.
“Are you on another planet? This isn’t meant to be quick,” Nicole told Tara. “I’m gonna put the kettle on.” She crossed the room towards the stairs.
“Will you watch him?” Shelley asked Angel and Tara, as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. “I want a drink ready for that cunt when he wakes up.”
***
In the sharpness of the Sunday dawn, Shelley sat on the low wall between the patio and the grass in the back garden. From the Benson and Hedges packet in her handbag, she took a cigarette. Once lit, she took a hard draw. Nicole floated towards her and handed her a mug of tea. Shelley became entranced by the evaporating steam swimming up into the air and then vanishing.
She tilted her head to the cloudless sky. She had been right, it was going to be a good day, but there was nothing good about what she felt. Although the rapist deserved his punishment and she didn’t have a choice in taking part, she wondered if the fact that she had done it made her a worse person. A voice in her head told her it didn’t.
“If we only stop one more girl getting raped, we’ve done the right thing.” Nicole put her arm around Shelley’s shoulders. “I don’t like it either, but it’s a catch twenty-two, isn’t it? I’d rather live with this than knowing I did nothing to stop him.”
Bewildered, Shelley realised she wasn’t having a debate with the board of directors in her head.
“And this is different... we planned it, and for a damn good reason. What happened at The Lanesborough, that wasn’t your fault.”
Shelley raised her cigarette to her mouth, but the gap between her fingers was bare. From the gold packet next to her on the wall, she took another and sparked up.
Aftershock from being raped the night before had cast her into oblivion. Everything seemed surreal and she didn’t feel like she was alive. Was she actually in the garden? Did Nicole really just mention The Lanesborough?
She touched the stone wall with her fingertips and felt its coldness. She took a drag on her cigarette and waved her hand through the smoke she exhaled, watching it disperse.
“Ow,” Nicole said, as Shelley prodded her. “What did you do that for?”
“I’m just checking I’m really here.”
“Aren’t you meant to pinch yourself for that?” Nicole smiled.
“I’m checking you’re here too.” Shelley spread her open palm across her collarbone and pressed the ruby into her skin.
“What you’ve said, Shell, it sounds like you might have post-traumatic stress. I know I’m not an expert but after what happened to me, I know a lot about that stuff.”
Shelley wondered what else she’d missed. How did a conversation about The Lanesborough and post-traumatic stress disorder materialise? She didn’t have PTSD; that was something her mother suffered – and she was nothing like her mother.
“Flashbacks and nightmares are part of it - I have them. I don’t have the checking, but I think that’s you trying to stop something bad from happening again. I think that’s why I work.” Nicole took a pull on her cigarette. “I’ve been trying to recreate situations where I’ve got control... but I don’t.”
Staring at the dewed grass, Shelley was confounded. She’d never told Nicole – or anyone else – about the constant stream of haunting images that she relived in her head, nor the nightmares, nor the checking. Had she been reading her mind or had Shelley spoken unknowingly?
“The heroin’s part of it too.” Nicole took Shelley’s hand and pushed back her sleeve. “You’re trying not to feel, but you can’t.”
***
“Fucking hell, babe. What’ve you done to yourself?” Angel appeared on the patio.
The secret that Shelley had meticulously kept with her carefully planned hits and her long sleeves was no more. It wasn’t good that Angel knew, but what was most disconcerting was what Nicole would think and whether they’d remain friends.
“You can’t leave Tara alone with him,” Nicole told Angel.
“It’s okay. He woke up but she’s knocked him out again.” Angel directed her eyes on Shelley. “Babe, you got a problem. You can’t—”
“She knows and she’s gonna stop. That’s what’s taken us so long,” Nicole said.
I don’t want to stop... I’m not stopping... It’s what keeps me going. Had she made a promise to give up heroin or was Nicole appeasing Angel? She couldn’t recall divulging her junk addiction, let alone committing to abstain.
“I’m making Tara a coffee. That girl needs to sober up. She’s not in a good way, you know.”
“She’s a fucking crackhead. I’ve tried with her, haven’t I, Shell?” Nicole flicked the contents of her mug over the grass. “She’s beyond help.”
“No one’s beyond help with that stuff, never. Don’t give up on her. She needs her friends right now.” Angel reached out and took Nicole’s mug from her hand. Then she took Shelley’s mug and went back into the house. Nicole followed her in. Shelley remained sitting on the wall, wondering if her closest friend wouldn’t be any more, now that she knew she was a junky.
Shelley lit a cigarette and stared at the empty space that Nicole had left on the low wall. She tried to picture her friend in her mind, attempting to recall their conversation. Part of it suddenly entered her head: she’d been talking about her maxim – the Golden Rule.
Nicole had said that she was treating the rapist how she’d want to be treated herself. If she were he, culpable of raping countless women, she would want to be stopped whatever that took. Then she remembered another part of the conversation: how she’d breached the rule with the lies she told to her mother and aunt. If she were her mother, she wouldn’t want her daughter to lie to her, and far less to prostitute herself. There was no justification she could cook up for that.
Shelley lit a cigarette with the one she’d just smoked down to the butt. She dropped the butt on a terracotta paving stone and stamped it out with her trainer. She gazed at the void on the patio wall, feeling her own internal void expand. It spread upwards from her gut and created an emptiness only heroin could fill. Consumed by that feeling and the craving for a hit, her effort to evoke the conversation with Nicole was fettered.
***
When they returned to the garden, Angel handed Shelley a purple mug and Nicole filled the space on the wall. As Shelley looked at her closest friend, she tried to conjure more of their earlier tete-a-tete, but nothing came. She averted her gaze to her own hand and became fixated on a vein.
Even though Nicole and Angel were now aware of her junk addiction, Shelley didn’t want them to know she was using in their presence. Her pain needed numbing, so she excused herself from the awkwardness on the patio to return to the solitude of the bathroom.
As Shelley stood to make her exit, Angel grabbed her arm. “You’re playing with death, you know that, girl? You’re on a path of self destruction.”
“I know. I told her to leave him, but she didn’t listen. He’s hurt you again, sweetheart, hasn’t he?” In her dressing gown, the lady from next door looked down at them from the top of the fence. She must’ve been standing on a ladder, making her nearly seven feet tall.
“What’s she talking about?” Nicole whispered in Shelley’s ear.
“No, it’s not him. We’re fine thanks.” Shelley looked up at the giant old lady. What was she doing in her garden this early on a Sunday morning? How long had she been eavesdropping on them?
“I don’t think so. We heard you fighting last night. My husband was this close to calling the police.” She gestured with her thumb and forefinger. “You can’t expect us to hear that and do nothing. If something happens to you, sweetheart, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“We’re fine, really. You don’t need to worry.”
“Denial, that’s what you’ve got. I’m telling you, sweetheart, wake up. You shouldn’t be here.”
Shelley walked through the patio doors and headed upstairs.