In her muddled state, Shelley saw only one solution to the problem posed by the lady next door. Having packed the foil, tube and lighter into her handbag, she left the bathroom and walked through to Len’s room.
Oddly, as she approached the mattress, her aversion to dirt didn’t ignite the urge to vomit. Perhaps it was due to the state of obliviousness, which was causing her to feel absent from her own body.
She studied the corners of the double mattress for the rip she’d made previously. She saw nothing. In case her eyes were unreliable, she pressed around with her hands, but having checked every corner, both feeling and seeing, she concluded there were no tears.
Perhaps her memory had failed her and she’d made the cut on a side. She checked the sides but found nothing. After scanning the top of the mattress, she climbed on and stroked it, feeling for something her eyes couldn’t see.
In case she’d made the rip on the underside of the mattress, she flipped it up. It thumped as it landed upright on the floor between the windowsill and the bed frame. There were no visible tears so she walked up the tight space to check with her hands. There was nothing to feel. It couldn’t be the same mattress.
Her head spun but tumbling on empty, the output was nil. Her heartbeat quickened and her hands trembled, causing her to feel partially present. She wasn’t yet ready to return and regretted having a chase instead of a fix. The latter would have kept her away from reality. There wasn’t time now. She’d told Nicole and Angel she’d be a couple of minutes and by her estimation, she’d already been fifteen or more.
A thought dropped into her empty drum: perhaps the mattress had been swapped, and the one she was looking for had been moved into a different bedroom. She left Len’s room to look in the others.
Fuck this. I need a hit. On the hall landing, she was sucked back into the bathroom. After what she’d been through, withholding a fix wasn’t cruel, it was torture, and she wasn’t the one lured there for that.
Injecting was messy with shaking hands. Following numerous misaligned needle insertions, her wrist resembled a section of dot-to-dot puzzle. On realising the cause of the problem – aiming a quivering needle at a trembling target – she hit a vein in her ankle and successfully delivered the shot.
With the junk riding in her blood, she felt ready to check the other bedrooms. There were single mattresses in two of the ransacked-styled boudoirs but in the fourth, a dirty double mattress lay on the floor. Having pushed aside the clutter of clothes and papers, she checked the corners. When she stumbled on the hole, she looked up to the ceiling and she whispered, “thank you.”
Using her sleeve as a protective cover for her hand, she delved inside. Unable to feel anything, she pushed her hand in deeper until she was in halfway up to her elbow, but the cavity was vacant. This might be a different tear. There could be another. Unwilling to accept there were no other holes, she rechecked the four corners. She found nothing.
The mattress was heavy to overturn, especially being on the floor, but after struggling for a while, she managed to lift it and lean it upright against her body. She pushed it forward and as it banged on the carpet, dust was stirred into the air. Tiny specks flew into her eyes, causing her to blink profusely.
When her eyes stopped watering, she studied the mattress then ran her hand over it – the final place the tear could be. It wasn’t there.
Perplexed, she walked back into the disarray that was Len’s bedroom and stood by the window, staring at the coffee-spattered spot on the carpet where she remembered seeing the handgun the first time. For a better view, she elevated out of her body and watched herself standing there, looking at the gun on the floor.
The memory was clear, but she wasn’t certain that it had in fact happened. Although she was sure she didn’t have crack psychosis on that day, it could have been an hallucinatory flashback.
***
“What do you mean you can’t find it?” Tara threw her hands in the air then appeared to lose her balance, wobbling backwards perilously close the cellar stairs. Nicole, who was nearest, grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the edge.
“That I can’t bloody find it. It’s not there. It’s gone. Vanished. Moved. Stolen. I don’t bloody know, but it’s not where I thought it was,” Shelley said.
“What are we going to do now?” Tara slurred.
“Well, you can stop drinking for a start,” Nicole told her.
“Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.” Tara waved her middle finger close to Nicole’s face. “I’ll do what I like. It’s your fucking fault anyway.”
“It’s my fault you neglected your kid.” Nicole swiped Tara’s finger and bent it back. “Really? What did you think I was gonna do, you crackhead bitch?”
“Don’t do this now, please.” Shelley shot them both a disapproving look, and Nicole released Tara’s finger. “I’ll think of something. Maybe we can search the house. But please, stop drinking, it’s not helping,” she told Tara.
“She’s ruining my life. Tell her to stop.” Tara swayed as she walked down the stairs, muttering what sounded like, “Then I won’t need to drink.”
Shelley clasped Nicole’s hand and led her into the shipwreck lounge. “What the fuck are we gonna do with her?”
“You know what she’s like. You shouldn’t have asked her to come.” Nicole proffered her Silk Cut packet.
Shelley declined. She sat down on one of her wooden, folding chairs and lit one of her own stronger brand. She knew why she’d asked Tara to come, and she knew Nicole did too. Although she was aware there would be awkwardness, she’d thought they’d put their differences aside. And earlier there wasn’t a problem. It had only started once Tara was drunk.
***
“He’s awake. I need his drink, babe?” Angel came running into the lounge.
“Oh shit, I forgot. I’m on it.” Shelley stubbed out her cigarette in the black, stolen-from-a-pub ashtray and got to her feet.
“Why don’t we make him overdose on roofies? Do you think we’ve got enough?” Nicole asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how many it takes.”
“Give him what’s left and see what happens.” Angel walked towards the door then added, “Can you bring it in? I can’t leave Tara on her own again. She’s out of it.”
Shelley walked down the hall and into the kitchen where the early morning sun was streaming through the window above the sink. She didn’t want to let him go so early. He won’t suffer if we do it like that.
“It won’t take your pain away,” replied a voice from the board.
Having selected the grimiest mug she could find, she looked by the bottles of alcohol for the Rohypnol. She couldn’t see it, so she shuffled them around on the work surface. Within moments, it became apparent that the paper wrap, which she’d made to store the tablets, was missing.
“Have you seen the roofies?” She shouted to Nicole while widening her search to the sink and the rest of the work surface.
Nicole came into the kitchen. “Yeah. They’re on the side, in front of the bottles.”
“They’re not. Look. It’s not here.” Shelley turned her palms. “Where the fuck I have put it?”
“It’s there. I saw it when I made the tea. They were in that wrap, weren’t they?” Nicole took over from Shelley shifting the bottles around on the worktop.
“Yeah, they were, but where the fuck is it now? What the fuck have I done with it?” Shelley drove her fingers into the hair at her temples.
In order to look in the cardboard box, which she’d used to carry the drinks, Shelley had to crouch on the dirty vinyl. As she did so, she glanced to the side and there she saw her body trapped under the rapist.
Agony poured into her from the dark cloud hovering above. Then the feeling of suffocation returned until she remembered to breathe. When she got to her feet, she felt shorter. Shorter and thinner. If only she could disappear like that.
***
Shelley and Nicole abandoned their search for the Rohypnol mid-morning and returned to the cellar. The rapist’s muffled groaning echoed in the room. In Shelley’s mind, it took over from her own internal screaming.
The malodour of dead rat seemed to mingle with something even more offensive. When Shelley approached the rapist, she realised what that was. In her anticipation of the proceedings, she’d omitted to factor in bodily eliminations.
“Where’s his drink, babe?” Angel asked.
“I can’t make it. We can’t find the roofies.” Shelley retched and backed off to stand farther from the rapist and closer to the staircase. “This is gross. I can’t stay in here.”
“You’re not the one who’s been breathing this in for hours. I swear it’s damaging my lungs,” Angel said.
“Let’s fix him more secure and get out. This has gotta be bad for our health.” Shelley walked over to the brown tape that lay on the concrete near the rapist. She held out one end to Nicole.
“I don’t think he’s going anywhere, love.”
“There’s no point risking it, is there?” Shelley said.
Bound in the wide, brown tape on top of his shiny wrapping, the rapist looked like a parcel. Shelley walked over to the stairs where Tara was asleep on the floor with a bottle of Stolichnaya clutched to her chest.
“Wake up.” Shelley shook Tara’s shoulders, mindful her friend’s face didn’t rub against the splintered step it was resting on.
“Tara...You fucking crackhead, wake up,” Nicole shouted in her face.
“Stop. You’ll scare her.” Angel pulled Nicole away.
“You sort her out then. I’m done with her.” Nicole stomped up the creaking staircase.
“Has she said anything to you?” Shelley asked Angel once she heard Nicole’s footsteps walking over the hall above them.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. She’s in a weird mood, that’s all.” What a stupid thing to say! Why did those words come out? Of course, she’s in a weird mood. Angel didn’t look concerned by Shelley’s comment, but what she’d really wanted to ask was whether Nicole knew that she’d lied to her about Angel’s gender, but she wasn’t confident to ask either of them outright. She was aware that Nicole’s mood could easily be justified by the current situation as it was – discovering her best friend was a junky who had no Rohypnol and couldn’t find the gun.
Shelley slipped her hands under Tara’s armpits and Angel lifted her feet. With Angel walking forwards and Shelley backwards, they carried her up the stairs and into the lounge. Shelley scanned the carpet for a clean section on which to deposit Tara. There were none, so she opted for an area under the bay windows where the intensity of stains, dust and dirt was closer to that found in Tara’s own flat – not yet as bad as Len’s house.
“I bet she’s fucking taken the roofies.” Nicole pointed at Tara.
“No, she didn’t. She wouldn’t,” Angel said. “She’s drunk, that’s all. She’s polished off a whole bottle.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her. Look in her pockets.” Nicole went over to Tara, knelt down beside her and reached for the pocket of her jeans.
“You can’t do that.” Angel took Nicole’s hand and gently guided it away from Tara. “Believe, she wouldn’t take them.”
“We have to do something. What about GHB? He could overdose on that. Or heroin. You could inject him,” Nicole suggested.
“The GHB’s finished and I haven’t got enough heroin.”
“What about bleach? We could inject him with that.” Nicole said.
“There isn’t any,” Shelley replied.
“Something else, then. Flash, Mr Muscle, whatever.” Nicole threw her hands in the air.
“There’s nothing. Fairy Liquid, shampoo and shower gel.”
“Would that kill him?” Angel asked.
“Probably, but if it clogs the needle, we’re fucked. I’ve only got one.”
“Suffocation. That’ll be—” Nicole began.
“Too quick and peaceful for that cunt,” Shelley said.
While Nicole and Angel discussed ideas, which kept leading them into dead ends, Shelley wondered when she’d be able to speak with Nicole about what she’d said in the garden. She needed to know how much Nicole knew of what happened at The Lanesborough. How much had she told her? And while they were on the subject, she may as well find out if the conversation she recalled at Tara’s had ever occurred. If it had, she couldn’t think of a reason why Nicole had never mentioned it before.
As her thoughts wandered, she recalled the girls she’d met on jobs through Marianne, and others she’d met in Marianne’s flat. The thought that Marianne had sent that animal to all those girls – it was incomprehensible.
“I’ll do it... I’ll stab him,” Shelley said.