by Nikki Dudley
As Michael slumps down the car, with blood exploding from his nose like a dam battered by flood, I squeeze myself between them. Thom narrowly misses striking me with yet another punch intended for my brother. He leaps away from me. I think about saying something to him, then shake my head and turn away.
Michael is lying face up on the floor, leaning his head as far back as he can, staring up at me drowsily. He is probably thinking about what a terrible person I am, or what a terrible person Thom is, or why he is being called a rapist when he is not.
I kneel next to him, bowing my head close to his body, atoning for my lie and its bloody offshoots that pierced him like shrapnel. He grabs my hand. I stroke his sweaty forehead and press my scarf against his bloodied nose until he squints and groans. This scarf is no longer a bind; it is a bandage.
“What the hell are you doing?” Thom yelps from behind me.
“You have no right to hurt him”.
“But he hurt you!” Thom cries as I help Michael sit up, and then turn to face him.
“I told you it was fine and you ignored me anyway. Why didn’t you listen?” I hit at his chest, hoping to bruise him.
“But you told me he hurt you. I don’t understand”. Thom holds his head with clawed fingers, backing away from the source of his throbbing confusion.
“Why did you tell him that, Alice?” Michael coughs, equally as perplexed.
“Don’t call her Alice”. Thom snarls and kicks Michael in the ribs, who yelps sadly and slouches sideways. I drive forward and shove Thom into the middle of the road. He stumbles as if he is standing on one leg. He holds his hands up, to help him balance and to reach out.
“Stop hurting my brother”, I spit. A current of shock mixed with awareness thrashes over his expression. He drops his arms, his body a balloon wailing into a slump.
“Your brother?” Thom squeaks, glancing at Michael on the floor, who is pushing himself up with a half press up.
“This is Michael”, I say blankly.
“But you told me...”
“I know what I told you”, I interject before he can repeat my poisonous lie. “I told you that because I didn’t want you to listen to Michael”. I step closer to him but he immediately backs away the same distance, afraid I have a disease that is airborne.
“Why Sarah?” Thom’s words seem to froth from his mouth. “Or Alice or whatever your name is”, he sulks.
“I’ve been ill for a long time and I haven’t been ready to face up to that. I didn’t want Michael to disturb my life”.
“You were ill?” Thom repeats, his tone lacking surprise.
“I have had some issues… well, I still do”. I hear the words and feel them clear and bold in my mind. There is no static or interference. I see the truth like a fact in an encyclopaedia. “I’ve been running away from dealing with them for ages. Even though they let me out of the hospital, I’m really not better”.
“The hospital?” Thom shouts out. His mouth moves like he is a dummy being manipulated by somebody else. He isn’t thinking about talking, he is merely performing it.
“I spent time in a hospital Thom. And just for the record, I was raped”.
“Why should I believe you now?” he mumbles dejectedly.
“Would I really want to tell you all these bad things about myself if they weren’t true?” I move towards him again and manage to sweep my hand across his.
“Well, you told me your brother was the one who raped you”, he reminds me and I bow my head.
“I shouldn’t have done that”, I pause and look into his face again. “I was afraid that he would tell you all these bad things about me and you would hate me. But I should’ve realised it would have been the best thing to get this all out, to realise how sick I’ve been”.
Thom shakes himself out and begins to turn away, then snaps back, kicking the floor between us. “This is all crazy. You’ve been lying to me this whole time”.
“You didn’t actually ask that much about my past. And when I told you anything, you just accepted it”. I don’t mean to criticise but Thom has no other way to hear this.
“You’re blaming me?” he cries, his mouth hanging open. I want to reach over and press it closed, fix one of the growing holes in his life.
“No, I’m sorry”.
“I can’t believe this Sarah”. Thom screws up his face. In this moment I feel superior because he is falling apart. I decide to close the gap between us and take him by the hands, as Michael had done with me only ten minutes before.
“It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have lied”. I want to hug him but his bruised knuckles stop me. Thom’s legs are wobbling, his face a piece of paper gradually crumpling, creating passages for his tears.
“I can’t deal with this right now. I need you…” he whimpers.
“You’re okay Thom, I know you are”, I say but I am lying again. Yet this is a lie that is needed, an exit clause and a scaffold.
“But Richard thinks I’m trying to hurt Aunty Val”. Thom pulls me towards him and grabs onto me. I have to push him away. “He told me to leave and now… now you hate me too”. He tries grabbing me again for a few seconds, I instinctively squeeze him but remember to urge him away again. Thom’s posture drops and he shuffles backwards.
“What did you do, Thom? Why did he tell you to leave?”
“They don’t understand Daniel”, Thom sighs and looks ready to lie on the ground and wait for the tyres to crush him into a pile of slush and chunks. Although Thom thinks he has nothing left, his words actually repair the smallest thread of our relationship. It is a microscopic fragment on a large tapestry. If anyone can empathise with the damage Daniel has done, I can.
“You can stay at my place. It’s a horrible bedsit but at least it’s somewhere”, I say, giving him the address and the key. Thom nods at the gesture and holds the key tightly in his hand, a hook and line keeping him attached to the shore, no matter how weakly.
I force myself to turn my back on Thom and finally help my brother to stand. Michael leans against me and we walk towards the car. I hurriedly help Michael into the passenger’s seat and he reluctantly hands over the keys when I fasten myself in the driver’s seat.
In the mirror, I struggle to pick Thom out in the darkness of the street. He is a thin line amongst trees and lamp-posts and the buildings. I shake the dull smudge of him out of sight and start the car, knowing I have to get to my bedsit before he does.
35 The Copper Smell
After we leave Thom in the road, merging into blackness; we stop by the bedsit. I tell Michael to wait in the car, his blood drying and cracked, and make my way inside.
I have to knock on the landlord’s door and ask him to let me in, saying I have lost my key. Thankfully he is so drunk he can’t even climb the stairs, so he is forced to lend me his keys and leave me grope-free on this occasion. He asks me to return them when I’ve finished.
The lock opens with a crack, adding sound effects to my desertion. If I’d had the choice, I’d never have come back so count yourself lucky, I chide the door. Then I toss the thought away with a quick shimmy of my head. It’s exactly that kind of thought that made me crazy in the first place…
The room is dark inside, so to avoid surprises I switch on the light and shut the door behind me. So I’m back, I tell myself, pursing my lips. The plants are much further into their decomposing process, the rat and insects are still motionless on the floor with several additions, and it still smells of damp and emptiness.
I instantly see some of the incriminating pointers that I must remove before Thom arrives. The paper from the day of the murder is buried in the duvet, thankfully folded so I don’t have to see the photo of Daniel again, the menacing photo that now looks even more eerie with the knowledge I now have. I thought he had been speaking to me when I first saw it and I was right. Yet I still have no idea how he made me kill him.
I think about keeping the paper but decide it’s too much of a risk. Thom could easily look thr
ough my things and find it. Why would I have kept this paper and no others? I go to the kitchen cabinet and collect a plastic bag, dumping the paper inside. I use a dustpan to collect the dead insects and rat, and pour them inside too; sadly adding the deceased plant. Everything here is dead.
This place always seemed like a desperate and dank environment but looking around now, when I feel like each breath is clearer and deeper, it appears much worse. How could I have ever lived here? How had I not grown diseased or died out of solidarity with the fading plants and insects?
I can’t see anything else in the bedsit that can alarm Thom. The other links to Daniel are the scarf, which Michael has, and the contents of my bag, that are safe in the car at present. In fact there is little in this room that reveals much about me. There is the bare amount of clothes, a few books and tapes, basic living provisions. This place has never been my home and for a while the concept of ‘home’ hasn’t been as prevalent as it should have been, too focussed on my stalking Daniel.
Yet I want a home now. I want to have somewhere that isn’t full of decay and sucks the breath from any living object forced to live within its walls.
More contented, I tie the bag up. I don’t bother to say goodbye to the bedsit or take the vision of it away inside my mind. Instead I have an urge to close my eyes whilst I walk to the door, not wanting to risk accidentally memorising the details. I fling the door open to leave, turning the light off with my back to the room. I feel for the handle and pull the door up against my back, sighing into the hallway.
I post the keys through the landlord’s door and deposit the bag of rubbish into the bins at the front of the building. As I close the gate, I glance back at the building and can’t help thinking this is the second prison I have managed to escape in a matter of months.
The car is alight where I have left Michael. I skip towards it and jump in. Michael opens his eyes at the noise. He looks like he has been dosing. The stench of dried blood smothers me, and I imagine sheets of copper nailed all around the car, blockading us inside.
“All sorted?” he mumbles.
“Yes, I needed to do that”.
“Where are your clothes?” Michael asks, noticing my hands are empty. I stare at them for a moment, remembering I had told Michael I needed to collect some clothes to take to his house.
“Oh, I decided to make a new start”. I shrug.
“Okay then”, Michael agrees, closing his eyes again. “Let’s get to the house. I think I need a shower and my bed”.
He does need a shower; he looks like he has eaten a messy hot dog and is now smothered with ketchup. The loss of blood and the trauma has left him sagging.
I start the engine, pulling away quickly. I have to take my brother home. I have to be the one to carry him back to his haven. As I cast a quick look into the wing mirror, I think I see a dark shape standing by the space the car had just occupied. Yet before I can begin to add detail to it, a car flashes its lights at me in the road ahead and I focus on that instead.
36 The Bedsit
Thom watches Sarah pull away from him and can only stand in the space that the car has departed from, not wanting another car to take its place. Perhaps if he keeps the space empty she will definitely come back to fill it once again. Can she just leave him like this? Can she completely forget him?
Thom resists the plan to simply sit down on the ground and wait for her return. He makes himself turn towards the house behind him, a towering cracked form that seems to sway. Although if it falls down whilst he is asleep tonight, he isn’t sure he will care. It certainly won’t be something to deter him.
He has kept the key safely in the inside pocket of his coat, where he will return it once he is inside her bedsit. He doesn’t want anyone to see what she has given him, a small token of rescue, a passage carved out after an avalanche. She has lied to him sure, but he stills needs her, still wants to call her by any name she wants him to. Sarah has watched him bruise and break her brother’s skin and she nonetheless has offered him somewhere to rest his equally broken body and mind for the night.
Thom tiptoes up the stairs, thinking how dark this stairway is, not like the lightened and warm passage to upstairs at Aunty Val’s. There is no carpet on the steps so each positioning of his feet, despite him being on tiptoe, makes a loud tapping sound. He can hear someone’s TV talking behind the wall next to him and hopes the bedsit will be quieter. He fears one whisper will throw his fragile mind against the floor, smashing it into tiny shards that he won’t be able to reassemble.
Thom finally reaches the door, his feet aching as though he has walked for days. He even imagines the tight squelching of blisters rubbing against his shoes. Shaking the thoughts away, he unlocks her front door and closes himself in. For a moment, he lets himself be immersed in the rush of darkness, glad to forget his physicality.
As his eyes begin to adjust, he sadly flicks the top light on and sweeps the room with a squint. He can see why Sarah would refer to it as ‘horrible’ but he accepts it for what it is – a refuge and a decent bed where he can bury himself for the night.
As he thinks what to do next, he hears a beeping noise and looks down at his pocket. It is only then he remembers his mobile, a distant friend he hasn’t connected with for weeks, and wonders how it even got into his pocket. He has no recollection of shoving it in there, but here it is, telling him he has a message. He presses open and reads:
I spoke to your family. Are you okay? Did you find somewhere to stay? Em x
Thom throws himself onto the bed. He stares at the words. He feels his heart slowing down for the first time in days and lets himself fall back on the bed. He wonders why he feels so alone when there are all these people talking about him – Richard, Aunty Val, and Emma. Can someone really be alone when others are talking about them?
Thom releases the phone and lets his hands plunge into the bedclothes. They are used, soft, and Thom is sure he can detect a faded whisper of Sarah. She has slept in these sheets; she has thrashed in them during nightmares. Sarah has let him borrow her sheets for the same purposes.
What kind of things has Sarah been through the last few years? How can Thom ever understand them? He may not ever comprehend her experience of being raped or even her mental illness but what he does understand is her fear. Fear of being judged, fear of alienating those you care about, fear of being discovered, and fear of facing up to yourself.
He doesn’t hate her for lying to him but he wishes she could’ve been honest. He is just so tired, his senses and perceptions fuzzy clouds that used to be sharp shapes that fit correctly into specific holes. Now he keeps pushing everything into holes that are too small or the wrong shape or holes that appear out of nowhere and extend for miles without a visible conclusion.
Thom remembers his phone and picks it up, rereading the message. He is nearly warmed by it but feels like a shard of ice slithers between him and this extension of concern. His eyes glaze over and he can hardly look at the screen. From memory of where the keys are, he types a message and when he finishes, turns over and falls asleep almost instantly.
Somewhere in another part of London, Emma receives a reply to her message and can only guess at what Thom might have been trying to tell her:
4 am mk. Stazing with a eriemd. Uhbnks 4 gettimg 4n tovch. I mis7 u + I’n rorry. H wish I 2ovld gn ba2k btt its ton late. Notiinh makes sdnsf. Tjom
37 Red Recollections
Walking around Michael’s house after my first night as a guest, I touch the objects he sees and uses every day (the blender, the kettle, the radiator, the taps), and I feel I am returning to life with each sensation. I can use these things. Maybe I can even live how I did before all of this.
You believe me, don’t you, Mum?
When we lived together, we owned all these things too. Touching them, I remember their sounds, their texture against my skin. I also remember you; standing in the kitchen in the early morning, waiting for the kettle to boil for your tea, smiling and tapping you
r spoon against the side.
I wish you were here now, the kettle’s boiled…
I am still busy thinking of you when Michael calls me into the living room. I am forced to leave you before the kettle has stopped spluttering. Yet I freeze in the doorway to the living room when I see Doctor Rosey, sitting with her clipboard, her legs crossed, pen poised for action. I expect her to click her fingers and have me dragged away or to press a button and have a cage drop down around me. Yet, she merely smiles. A-tiny-line-on-a-large-piece-of-paper smile.
“Alice. It’s so good to see you again”, she tells me as I sit opposite her. Her tone couldn’t have been more stretched. It is a tired balloon that has been inflated too many times. She bites her lip as she takes me in. She is probably wondering just how insane I still am. I come incredibly close to making a strange screeching sound and rolling around the floor but looking up at Michael standing between us, for once, I don’t want to fail him.
“Doctor Rosey”, I spit. She notices my tone and immediately scratches something onto her board.
“I think it’s time you put that down and answered some of my questions”, I tell her firmly. Doctor Rosey’s face drops at the suggestion but Michael repeats the same request, translating it for her. She then does as she is told and places the clipboard beside her. I want to laugh as her fingers claw into the sofa and unconsciously spread towards her treasured sidekick.
“Tell me about Daniel Mansen”, I say. Thinking I have already drained her face of colour, she surprises me by turning even paler.
“Don’t lie to her”, Michael adds; crossing his arms and taking a seat on the arm of the chair I am sitting in. Doctor Rosey looks instantly betrayed and straightens herself up.
“I presume you’ve already discussed it with Alice”, the Doctor addresses Michael.
“You can talk directly to me”. I wrestle into her attention and she is forced to meet my gaze, nodding rigidly.