by Kate Davies
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But you only feel jealous when you’re scared of losing something. And if you’re secure in your relationship, what’s wrong with having fun on the side?’
‘I don’t think a lover in Lyon counts as “fun on the side”,’ said Ella.
Zhu turned to me and said, ‘Ignore Ella. She’s terminally monogamous.’
‘I wouldn’t stand for it,’ said Dave. ‘It’s not like Sam’s special, is it? Everyone would shag around if they could, but that’s not what you do when you’ve committed to someone. It’s not right.’
‘Sam has a very high libido,’ I explained. ‘Sex is kind of her hobby.’
Dave laughed. Some of his beer dribbled down his chin as he did so; I could see Alice’s face register disgust, and I felt a bit sorry for Dave. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘And what if my hobby was rubbing my knob on ladies’ coats on the Tube? Would that be OK, then?’
‘Dave!’ said Alice.
‘Ooh,’ said Dave, eyes closed, getting into the idea. ‘It’s all furry.’
‘You’re disgusting,’ I said.
‘What?’ Dave said. ‘You narrow-minded now or something?’
But then he looked at me and saw that I might be about to cry. His face fell, and he said, ‘Sorry, Jules.’
I didn’t want to cry, and I definitely didn’t want anyone to see me cry, so I said, ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ and stumbled away, taking a long swig of my Red Stripe, forcing myself to nod to the music as the beat travelled up through my legs.
‘I just don’t want you to get hurt,’ Dave called after me. ‘You shouldn’t let her take you for a ride.’
But I’d bought a ticket for the ride.
‘Hey.’ Ella was stumbling away from the group towards me. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. I just want to be on my own for a bit.’
Ella stopped. ‘You sure?’
I nodded, and she walked back towards the others, looking over her shoulder at me until I turned away from her.
Ella and Dave didn’t understand. Sam wasn’t taking advantage of me; like she’d said, she was offering me freedom. I would take advantage of that freedom, right here, right now.
I looked around at the waving, sweaty bodies, searching for a likely sex candidate. I wandered around the warehouse, dodging teenagers climbing into speakers. A group of women were leaning against what had been the till point of the carpet showroom. They look like lesbians, I thought – a couple of them had short hair, and one of them was wearing a tie. Perhaps they would like to have sex with me. I walked over and smiled at them, sexually.
‘Hello,’ I said, still smiling.
The women turned and looked at me. They didn’t say anything.
‘Can I talk to you?’ I said.
The women looked at me some more. They weren’t smiling.
Nor was I, by this point.
‘I’m not hitting on anyone,’ I said. ‘I just want to make friends.’
‘We aren’t really looking to meet new people?’ said a woman with short dark hair and a high-pitched American accent. ‘We’re just hanging out together?’
‘That’s cool!’ I said. ‘That’s totally cool!’ I walked away around them, backwards, waving like a loon, and tried to get lost in the crowds.
I really wished I’d taken some drugs.
I walked back towards the others, but Ella and Zhu had wandered off somewhere and Alice had her arms around Dave’s neck now. He said something to her and they both laughed, and then they kissed, a long, slow kiss that made me feel like a voyeur for watching them. I should have been happy for them, but I felt self- indulgently miserable instead, so I did the mature thing and hid. I sat down on the floor at the side of the warehouse, my back to the sweaty wall.
A couple of feet in front of me, on the floor, a man was writhing and twisting, muttering to himself, clearly in a K hole. Things could be worse, I supposed. I could be him. But then he probably wouldn’t remember anything about tonight when he woke up, whereas I was horribly conscious of everything that was going on.
I saw an abandoned, unopened can of beer, just out of reach, glowing appealingly in the strobe lights. I reached over to grab it. My hand slipped as I tried to open it – what was it, my sixth? My seventh? Whatever. I forced myself to drink it down, ignoring how thick it felt in my throat.
My phone buzzed with a text from Alice. Where are you? Zhu and Ella were trying to find you to say goodbye.
Don’t worry about me, I texted back.
I can see you, she replied, a minute later. Wait right there. It wasn’t as though I had anywhere to go.
Alice sat down next to me and put her arm around me. I slumped onto her shoulder.
‘No one loves me,’ I slurred. ‘Everyone has someone to love them except for me. Why am I so unlovable? Why can’t I be enough for someone?’
‘You are enough, darling,’ said Alice, stroking my hair. ‘You just haven’t met someone who really appreciates you yet.’
‘Why doesn’t Sam love me?’ I said. ‘I love her.’
‘Maybe she does,’ she said. ‘In her way.’
It was about 1 a.m. by this point, and Alice was yawning and looking at her watch.
‘Just go home,’ I said.
‘Not without you.’
‘I’m not coming,’ I said, sulky from the beer. ‘I’m going to find someone to have sex with.’
‘Please, Julia,’ she said. ‘I’m getting us an Uber.’
‘No,’ I said, crossing my arms and slumping further down the wall.
The car arrived. I refused to move. Alice tried to drag me out of the warehouse. I made myself heavy and refused to cooperate. The car left without us in it.
‘Fine,’ Alice said. ‘I’m going. But if you get murdered, don’t blame me.’
She let me go and I fell back to the ground. She started to walk away, but then she turned around and marched back towards me. And then she stopped. She had seen someone standing behind me.
‘Hello,’ she said.
I turned my head, which made everything blur. It was Jane, who had taken my lesbian virginity. She had her arm around a woman with a shaved head and a nose ring.
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ she said.
‘Jane, right?’ said Alice, clutching her arm. I’d never seen her so pleased to see someone. ‘Will you look after her? I’m going home and she won’t come with me.’
‘No problem,’ said Jane. She sat down and put her arm around me. ‘I’ll make sure she gets back OK.’
Alice ran off to join Dave, making ‘text me’ actions at me. She stumbled as they left the warehouse to catch their cab but Dave caught her sleeve and stopped her falling. Rescued by her man, I thought as I closed my eyes. Pathetic.
The world was spinning.
‘You’re wasted,’ said Jane.
I grunted.
‘You need something to even you out,’ said Jane’s friend. ‘I’m getting some MDMA. Want some?’
I grunted again. She took that as a yes, and went off to the drug bar.
I opened my eyes and focused on an empty packet of cigarettes on the floor, an anchor to stop the room spinning.
‘Is she your girlfriend?’ I asked Jane.
‘I don’t do girlfriends. I told you that,’ she said. ‘Her name’s Tia. We’re fucking.’
‘She’s hot,’ I said.
‘If you’re lucky, I’ll share her with you,’ said Jane.
I laughed, but she didn’t seem to be joking.
Tia came back and waved a tiny plastic bag at us. ‘They’re out of mandy. I got some E. And some K, in case we need it later. Ready?’ she said.
I nodded.
I washed down the little tablet with my beer and slumped back against the wall, waiting for it to kick in.
It didn’t take long. The room started pulsing. The lights were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I’d never really appreciated electric light before. What a miracle. And the fact that we could co
lour it red, or green, or yellow. We were gods, really, weren’t we?
‘Are you rushing?’ asked Jane.
I nodded.
‘I think there’s some acid in this, or some shit,’ said Tia.
I nodded again.
Tia and Jane started kissing. I didn’t want to be left out, so I crawled over to them on my hands and knees and started stroking their backs.
‘We should be somewhere smaller,’ said Tia, ‘where we can all get really close to each other.’
‘Yes!’ said Jane. ‘You are so intelligent and observant.’
We held hands in a chain and made our way to the toilets. I opened a cubicle door with one hand – it seemed very important that I didn’t let go of anyone.
The toilet was blocked. I knocked down the seat and sat down. The back of the cistern was cloudy with recently snorted coke. Tia and Jane knelt on the floor and started stroking my face.
‘You have such beautiful skin,’ said Tia.
‘You have such beautiful skin,’ I said. ‘It’s so smooth. I can really see that you are a mammal.’
‘That’s so true. We are all beautiful mammals.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Jane, gazing at her palm. ‘Look at your hand.’
I looked at my hand, at every line and vein and scratchy cuticle. I looked at every ridge on every nail. I felt tearful, suddenly, connected to my mother and my grandmother and everyone who had gone before me and would come after me. I finally understood what it meant to be human.
‘We are all so beautiful,’ I said.
Tia nodded and kissed me on the lips.
‘We need music,’ said Jane, and she pulled out her iPhone and scrolled through Spotify. ‘Tracy Chapman,’ she said, and the opening chords of ‘Fast Car’ began playing from her phone’s tinny speakers. I began to cry.
‘Your tears are so beautiful,’ said Tia. ‘They’re like little drops of glass. I’m sorry you’re sad.’
‘I’m not sad any more,’ I said. ‘I have you.’
‘Yeah, you do have me,’ said Tia. ‘And I know we’re just on drugs and that, but I really feel like I know you. Know what I mean?’
I nodded.
‘You’re both so great,’ said Jane, stroking our cheeks. ‘I’m so glad you’ve met. The three of us together makes so much sense.’
‘We should hang out!’ I said. ‘What are you guys doing tomorrow? Shall we meet for brunch?’
‘Yes!’ they both said.
I felt too far away from the others so I came down off the toilet seat and squeezed between them, so we were all sitting against the wall, knees hunched, arms around each other.
I didn’t feel drunk, or sick, or alone, or jealous. I felt incredibly lucky and grateful to be who I was, and where I was, and to have found such wonderful friends, and such a perfect place to sit, that fitted the three of us exactly.
That feeling lasted for about three Tracy Chapman songs. Just as ‘For My Lover’ ended, a slow dread began to creep upwards through me.
Jane and Tia didn’t like me really. They were putting up with me.
‘I should leave you guys alone,’ I said, getting to my feet.
‘No,’ said Jane, tugging me down. ‘We want you with us.’ She pulled me to her side and stroked my head. ‘You’re grinding,’ she said, rubbing my jaw.
I was, I noticed. My teeth were clenched together. I couldn’t seem to relax.
Tia held out a piece of gum. I put it in my mouth. It was like a pillow of ice. I had never appreciated gum before.
I felt tears forming in my eyes again. The world was such a wonderful place, full of such wonderful things, and yet we were all going to die.
‘You’re coming down,’ said Jane, rubbing my hand.
‘No, don’t come down,’ said Tia.
‘I feel anxious,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Tia, eyes wide. She knelt in front of me and pushed on my chest. ‘Does that help?’
I nodded. It did.
‘You need some K,’ said Jane. She pulled out a wrap and cut lines on the cistern with her Boots Advantage Card.
‘Wow. That’s so ironic,’ I said.
‘Why?’ said Jane, smoothing out the lines.
‘Because Boots is all about health. And drugs aren’t healthy.’
‘Boots is a drugstore. These are drugs,’ said Jane.
‘Oh my God!’ I said, everything clear, suddenly. ‘You’re right!’ I saw the lines differently then, as medicine that would make everything better.
Tia opened her wallet and handed me a fifty-pound note. I held it up to the light, marvelling at the magic of the holograph. The note glowed red, like a sunset. I’d never held a fifty-pound note before.
‘Hurry up,’ said Jane.
I rolled up the note carefully. I hadn’t snorted anything since uni and I was worried I’d embarrass myself and do it wrong, somehow, and show myself up as an amateur. The K stung as it hit the back of my throat. My eyes began to water.
The others took turns snorting their lines. We rubbed the rest on our gums.
I don’t remember a great deal about what happened next.
At one point I thought the three of us were a triptych in a stained-glass window.
At another point, we definitely kissed – a strange, asexual three-way. As we kissed the background behind us shifted, like a stage set. We were in the toilet. We were on a desert island. We were in a cemetery.
Tia’s nose started to bleed.
I could see the crust on her nostrils all of a sudden.
The acne on her forehead.
Jane’s teeth were stained yellow.
I had to get out of there.
I stood up very slowly.
‘Where are you going?’ said Jane, except I don’t think she said it that fluently – it was more like ‘Wherergo?’
‘Home,’ I said. I walked out of the cubicle, steadying myself against the walls. The others didn’t try to stop me. They were glassy eyed now, lying there, twitching. They were together. They’d be fine.
I edged my way out of the room, while the floor of the warehouse undulated beneath me like the ocean. Somehow I got into a taxi. And then I vomited all over it.
‘You pay me for that,’ said the taxi driver, furious. ‘You pay me.’
He stopped at a cashpoint. I got out, only to find that my wallet had been stolen.
I stumbled back to the taxi and leaned down to the window. ‘Wallet gone,’ I said.
The taxi driver swore at me and drove away.
It was dawn. The sun was coming up over the motorway, throwing the cars and the gasworks and the trees into silhouette. I took off my shoes to ground myself and walked to the Tube. I don’t know how many times I fell over. I don’t know how many times I stopped to vomit by the side of the road. I still had my Oyster card, and somehow I made it onto the Piccadilly line. I retched all the way to Manor House. By the time I got home, the sun was up. According to a note on my door, Alice and Dave had gone out for breakfast. I ran a bath. I lay in it, staring at the ceiling till the water was cold.
18. AN UNUSUAL LESBIAN SAINT
I slept till midday, and then I started to vomit again. Relentlessly. There was nothing inside me to vomit up any more, but I vomited anyway, as though my body wanted rid of the memory of whatever I’d put in it. I leaned over the kitchen sink, shaking, unable to hold myself up properly.
My stomach relaxed a little. I made it to bed and slept on and off, waking up sweaty and sick with shame.
A band of the most extraordinary pain formed around my head. I crawled to the bathroom to splash water on my face and lay on the cool floor tiles, my arm covering my eyes.
‘Alice,’ I bleated. ‘Alice? Mum?’
I have given myself a brain haemorrhage, I thought. This is how I die: alone, in my bathroom, because of drugs. I’m not famous, so it’s not even glamorous.
I reached for my phone. I called Alice. She didn’t answer.
What if I fell back asleep and never
woke up? I couldn’t risk it. I dialled 999.
The ambulance took about an hour to arrive, by which time I was blind with pain, moaning in agony. They wheeled me out to the ambulance with a cardboard bowl on my knee in case I vomited.
‘I’m dying,’ I said.
‘You’re not dying,’ the paramedic said. ‘You’re just stupid.’
They drove me to a hospital. I lay there on a metal bed in the strip-lit room, clutching my cardboard bowl like a teddy bear.
I took my phone out again and texted Alice. In hospital. Not sure which. Poisoned self.
Shit! Alice replied. Dave has taken me on a surprise trip to Brighton! Do you want me to come home?
No, I texted back, and then my phone died.
A few hours later, a doctor came into my room, grim faced, to give me a lecture. ‘You know how much it costs the NHS when people like you drink too much and have a good time and then end up in here?’
I nodded. I was disgusted with myself. ‘You’re sure I don’t have a brain haemorrhage?’ I asked.
‘You have a bad headache,’ he said.
They took me to a bed on the main ward and hooked me up to a saline drip. The band of pain started to release.
I fell asleep.
‘Julia?’
I knew that voice. But it wasn’t Alice, and she was the only person who knew I was in hospital. I opened my eyes.
Sam was standing there, holding a bunch of grapes. ‘I went round to visit you this morning, and you weren’t at home, and you weren’t answering your phone, so I called Alice—’
‘How did you find me? How did you know where I was?’
‘This is the closest hospital to your house.’ She pulled up a chair next to my bed and sat down. She took my hand and kissed it. ‘How are you, my poor baby?’ She smelled so familiar and clean.
I began to cry. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I said.
‘You don’t need to thank me.’
‘I thought I was going to die.’
‘I’ve been there, babes. What did you take? Coke?’
‘K.’
She winced. ‘That’s rough.’
I nodded. ‘Will you stay with me?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
I closed my eyes and slept. And when I opened them, she was still there, stroking my forehead.