‘I know. I’m sorry to dump this on you... again. But we’re just too far away now.’
‘It’s fine, Dad, honestly. The whole idea of him coming here was so I could keep an eye on him. I’d hoped I wouldn’t need to...’ she said as she shimmied into her jogging bottoms.
‘We’ll drive up first thing in the morning,’ her dad said helplessly.
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Taylor, we need to. We need to be able to do something,’ he said authoritatively, before more quietly adding, ‘You’re going to need back up.’
‘Yeah, I know. I need to go now, Dad, I’ll text you when I find him.’
‘OK. Thank you, sweetheart. We love you.’
‘I love you too, Dad. Bye,’ Taylor replied, then hung up. She was still only half dressed, trying to find some warmer layers to search the city in. It had snowed on and off for a few days, since her date with Paige, and she knew she would be no use to Dylan with hypothermia. She found her gloves and hat under a pile of dirty washing in the corner of her room, then pounded down the stairs and grabbed her scarf and winter coat off the hooks by the door. She violently shoved her feet into her snow boots and attempted to tie them up, only to keep dropping the loop or pulling them too tight and them coming undone.
‘Damn it, Dylan!’ she yelled at no one, ripping the offending shoe off and throwing it across the hallway, hitting the wall with a thud. Sat on the stairs, she buried her head in her hands and sobbed. It was two in the morning, she had only just woken up, and her brain was fighting to go back into that blissful dream state. Dylan had been attending all his classes and getting good marks, he had been going climbing regularly, and started making friends. It had all seemed to be going well. Nothing like the last time he had tried going to university, when he and Taylor left for separate universities at eighteen. Their grandad died, then their mother was diagnosed with cancer, all in Dylan’s first year. He dropped out the summer between his first and second year. But everything was fine this time, which just made her more upset and angry.
Eventually she pulled herself together, retrieved her shoe, shoved it on her foot, and stood in front of the hallway mirror, steeling herself for the hunt she was about to go on. She had the advantage of knowing her prey quite well, but a drunk Dylan was an unpredictable Dylan.
Her first destination was his flat. She wouldn’t normally entertain the idea of banging on someone’s door in the small hours of the morning, but his flatmates might be able to point her in the right direction. She got into her car and brought up Dylan’s number on her phone, hoping she could get through to him and wouldn’t have to rudely awaken someone else. He didn’t pick up any of the half a dozen times she called him on the way to his flat. She tried once more once she got there, praying for an answer, but nothing. She took a deep breath and dragged herself out of the car, through the always unlocked security gate, and up the three flights of stairs to his flat, ignoring the feeling of ratchet straps being tightened around her chest.
She steeled herself, raised her fist, and banged loudly on the door. She didn’t expect a response the first time. She knew that if someone banged on her door at nearly two in the morning she wouldn’t be tempted to answer it, but she had to be persistent. Taylor paced back and forth a little, with every second she waited before knocking again feeling like an hour. Her willpower didn’t last long and she banged on the door again, harder and with a higher tempo. She needed to get someone out of bed, if anyone was in there at all. She tried knocking a third time but still didn’t get answer. Taylor sighed angrily before heading back to the stairs and bounding down them two at a time.
‘Please, I just need to find my brother,’ she pleaded with the bouncer. He didn’t respond, unmoved by her plight. The queue for the club stretched out behind her and he clearly thought she was just trying to pull a fast one. She turned away from him, withheld tears burning her eyes. This was the sixth club she had tried; the other five had at least let her in to try and find him. She walked past the queue of people and shivered with empathy. Most of the boys were only wearing shirts and trousers and some of them were shivering. The girls were almost all wearing dresses that stopped above their knees, with nothing to keep their uncovered shoulders warm. The toes of their bare feet poked out of the end of their shoes, and some of them were definitely a little blue. Taylor took her phone out again, the screen lighting up the side of her face, and tried calling Dylan again. She must have called him over twenty times with no response, so she jumped a little when he actually picked up.
‘Heellllllloooooooooooo,’ he said drunkenly, laughing down the phone at her.
‘Dylan, where are you?!’ she almost screamed at him, the frustration of the night bubbling over.
‘Whyyyy? Is the Taylornator out to get me?!’ he said making fun of her.
‘Dylan! I’m serious! Where are you?’
‘Uhhh... I dunno.’ He admitted. ‘Hey, mate,’ he said to someone else there, ‘where are we?’. Taylor could hear a muffled response in the background.
‘This fine gentleman says we are in King’s Kebab House,’ Dylan continued, slurring his words.
‘OK. Stay there. I’m coming.’
‘Are you joining us for some drinky-poos?’ Dylan said excitedly.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ Taylor said angrily as she hung up. She quickly put the kebab place into the map app on her phone, and let out a frustrated screech. It was on the other side of town. She’d been looking in completely the wrong place. Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she walked back to her car trying to calm herself down, resisting the urge to run to the vehicle. She didn’t need a speeding ticket, or worse, to put a bitter cherry on top of her night.
Back at her car, she took a long, deep breath before starting the engine. In the hour or so she’d been gone, the windscreen had partially frozen over, which hampered her departure. She started thinking of all the things she wanted to yell at her brother, about how he was selfish and how he’d thrown away years of sobriety over what? A few laughs? She gripped the steering wheel tighter and let out a frustrated growl as her knuckles turned white. Once the windscreen had cleared enough for her to drive, she set off, hoping that Dylan hadn’t moved on from the kebab place. Taylor kept thinking about all the other times she’d had to go out in the middle of the night to find her brother like this, but those memories were interspersed with others. Dylan talking her through her fear of heights when she first started climbing, when they were only eight. Dylan offering to beat up any boy who broke her heart, before she had told him she was gay. Dylan standing by her while her parents got used to that idea. Her anger began dissipating and she reminded herself that this wasn’t him; addiction was an illness, and being angry at him wouldn’t help him heal.
She pulled up outside King’s Kebab House and her shoulders relaxed slightly; she could see him through the window. He stood next to one of his flatmates, talking to two women who clearly wished they were elsewhere. He stumbled a few times while gesticulating wildly, catching himself at the last second by grabbing onto a nearby table. Taylor turned off the car and went inside.
‘Taylooooooooooooor in the house!’ he shouted as soon as she walked through the door.
‘Time to go, Dylan,’ she said calmly, putting her hand on her brother’s arm. He quickly shrugged it off.
‘But the night is so young!’ he said, throwing his arms out wide and looking up at the strip lights above him, blinking painfully and instantly regretting his decision.
‘Please, Dyl?’ Taylor said, barely above a whisper. ‘Mum and Dad are worried.’
‘Why? Did you call them to tell on me?’ he said, still blinking the light out of his eyes.
‘No, Dylan, you called them. From inside a club.’
Dylan’s jovial smiled slipped.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, “oh”,’ she spat. ‘I said I’d find you. They’re driving up in the morning.’
‘Why? I’m fiiiine. I’ve made some f
riends! See?’ he said, standing next to one of the women and throwing his arm around her shoulder. The unsuspecting woman quickly removed it, as if it was something disgusting she had found on the bottom of her shoe. Dylan’s smile faltered again. Taylor knew that somewhere in there he understood the gravity of what had happened.
‘Who’re you to spoil the party?’ his flatmate said, stepping into her personal space and squaring up to her.
‘I’m his sister, as you well know,’ she said with as much bravado as she could manage; Dylan’s flatmate was several inches taller than her and clearly frequented the gym often.
Dylan snapped, forced himself in between his sister and the flatmate and pushed the flatmate hard in the chest. ‘Don’t speak to her like that,’ he yelled, still struggling to keep himself upright. The flatmate quickly surveyed the kebab house and seemed to register the number of other people there, and more importantly, the cameras.
‘Whatever,’ he said, pushing past them and walking out.
‘Yeah, you better leave!’ Dylan said drunkenly, once his flatmate was out of earshot. The guy was several inches taller than him, too. The two women had also disappeared off into the street, leaving just Dylan and Taylor standing by the doorway.
‘C’mon,’ Taylor said gently, holding his arm and guiding him out of the kebab shop. She just about managed to open the passenger door while keeping him upright, before he tumbled in, hitting his head on door frame as he did so.
‘Karma,’ Taylor muttered under her breath, before slamming the passenger door and heading to the driver’s side. She shot off a quick text to her dad before getting in, letting him know that she’d got Dylan and was taking him back to hers. She climbed into the car and started putting on her seatbelt before starting the engine. Dylan half leaned, half fell over, his head landing on her shoulder.
‘I love you,’ he laughed giddily.
‘Uh huh’ she responded, pushing him back into the upright position. ‘Put your seatbelt on.’
Once they got home Taylor had to awkwardly manoeuvre her brother into the house, his arm over her shoulders and her hanging on tightly as he teetered everywhere. His control over his limbs seemed limited and his attempts to co-operate only seemed to slow progress down. She still hadn’t set up the spare bedroom so she deposited him on the sofa, the springs groaning under the sudden weight.
‘Stay here,’ she commanded as she disappeared off into the kitchen. Dylan saluted her in response, giggling. Taylor let the tap run, checking the temperature of the water with her fingers before filling up a two-litre plastic bottle for her brother. She took that back into the living room and put it in his hands without saying a word, not trusting herself to keep her temper in check. She left again, this time on the search for the painkillers he would inevitably need in the morning when his hangover hit. He hadn’t drunk in so long, part of her hoped that meant the hangover would be worse than ever, maybe bad enough to put him off. After she found the painkillers she went back into the living room only to find Dylan lying on his side, his feet still half on the floor, cuddling the water bottle and just beginning to snore. She put the painkillers down on the table in front of him and got several blankets to cover him with. He didn’t seem to mind not having a pillow so she didn’t bother trying to find one. Once he was sorted she retrieved her own duvet and pillow, laying them out on the other sofa, and attempted to settle down. She didn’t want him to choke on his own vomit in his sleep. She realised she hadn’t got him a bucket yet, so she reluctantly got back up off the sofa to get one from the utility room. It didn’t take her long to find; she picked it up and turned to go back to the living room, but found she couldn’t make her feet move. Instead tears started rolling silently down her cheeks and muffled sobs began to shake her entire body, her stomach full of stabbing pains from the effort it was taking to hold her crying in as much as possible. She dug her phone out of her pocket and thought about texting her parents, but she didn’t want to worry them any more than they already were. She would see them in a few hours anyway. Instead, she leant back against the wall and slowly slid down until she was sat on the floor. She kicked the door closed and let her weeping overcome her, crying loudly and punching her small fists into the tiled floor. It wasn’t fair that this was happening, again.
Eventually the crying stopped and was replaced by pure numbness; partially from being sat on the cold floor for so long but mainly due to not having any more emotions to give. She eased herself to her feet, the cramping in her legs quickly changing to pins and needles to the point where she had to steady herself on the washing machine for a few minutes. Taking a few deep breaths, she wiped her eyes and tried to make herself look unfazed, just in case Dylan was awake when she went back to give him the bucket. However, it turned out he was still fast asleep, snoring his head off with drool dripping out of his mouth and onto the sofa. She’d make him clean it tomorrow.
She put the bucket down by the sofa, the same end as his head, and then headed toward her makeshift bed. The lumpy cushions did not promise a comfortable night’s sleep but it was better than lying awake upstairs, worrying. She wrapped the duvet around her as tightly as she could, trying to emulate the feelings she’d had before her parents had woken her a few short hours ago. She willed the nice dreams to come, of her and Paige playing in the snow or her and Paige climbing, but her brain seemed to always find a way to tie it back to Dylan and her relationship with him. Even dancing in the snow reminded her of their youth, when they were both building snowmen in the yard, so carefree.
She checked the time on her phone. It was nearly five a.m. now. Her parents would probably be setting off on the three-hour drive soon. She didn’t want to think about the state her mother would be in when they arrived, and her dad’s stoic face kept popping into her mind; a mask that tried to hide the hurt of the situation. She drifted off to sleep not knowing what tomorrow would bring. Would Dylan be repentant, or would he claim innocence, or that it was ‘just one drink’ so it wasn’t a problem? Would he accept help, or fight it like he had done so many times before? Her mind flew back to the last time he had gotten this drunk, the time that finally had brought him to his senses.
The nightmare had started with flashes of blue light coming through her bedroom window, bright enough that they woke her up before the call of the doorbell did. Her pitch-black bedroom intermittently illuminated by blue allowed her to pick her way across the debris of the floor; the recent upheaval from living with her ex had not given her time to unpack. A door on the landing creaked open and her bleary-eyed father met her gaze. The doorbell rang again. Without saying a word her father signalled that she should remain upstairs and that he would go to the door. Taylor followed him as far as the top of the stairs, out of curiosity and fear. There were gentle but gruff voices at the door, with words like ‘your son’ and ‘hospital’ and ‘drowned’ floating up the staircase. Her father’s head dropped, chin to chest, as he took in the news. Taylor was joined by her mother at the top of the stairs. Her mother put an arm around her and Taylor could feel her shaking. The cold air blew the rain through the open front door, speckling her father’s pyjamas with water.
With a flash the nightmare changed. The family were at the hospital, surrounding the bed of a forlorn figure wrapped in warming blankets. The doctors said they didn’t know how long he had been in the water, or how long he had been without oxygen. The sun slowly rose and tried to crawl its way into the side room. Nurses bustled in and out, but the family did not move; frozen by the coldness of their brother and son’s body.
A doctor tapped her father on the shoulder. The person who had jumped in to pull him out of the frigid dock was asking for an update, and they needed the family’s permission to share information with him. Her father nodded silently, tears rolling down his cheeks. There was a knock at the side room door, but it didn’t open. The knock got louder and more insistent, before Taylor woke with a start.
She peeled her eyes open, blinking into the light that was now fi
lling her living room. The lumpy shape on the sofa indicated that Dylan was still there, sound asleep. Her weary body reluctantly complied with her commands to get up and open the door. The outline of her parents was visible through the frosted glass as she fumbled trying to get the keys into the lock to let them in.
‘Oh, Taylor!’ her mother said as soon as she opened the door. She caught sight of her reflection over her mother’s shoulder as she was enveloped in a hug. Her eyes were bloodshot with heavy bags underneath them. Her skin was very pale, and her hair was all over the place. Her father quickly joined them in the hug, before raising his eyebrows questioningly.
‘In the living room,’ Taylor said in response, and her father slipped past them to investigate.
‘Let’s make you a cup of tea,’ her mother said, fussing with the hem of Taylor’s pyjamas.
‘I don’t drink tea, Mum,’ Taylor said gently.
‘I know, but I still don’t know how to make coffee the way you like it,’ her mother said, placing her hand on the small of her daughter’s back and guiding her towards the kitchen.
The kitchen felt cold under the early morning winter sun. It beamed through the windows, highlighting all the hard edges that existed in the tiled room. Taylor’s mum filled the kettle up and put it on, then began rummaging for mugs. She also started filling the sink with hot water and dropping the few dirty dishes around into the soapy bowl.
‘Mum, you don’t need -’ Taylor began.
‘I might as well while I’m here,’ her mum responded, cutting her off.
‘Mum, it’s OK -’
‘Where do you keep your washing up liquid?’ her mum asked, ignoring her.
‘Mum, stop!’ Taylor said, louder than she meant to. Her mum froze at the sound of her daughter’s raised voice and braced herself on the counter, hands either side of the sink.
‘Mum, it’s OK,’ Taylor said more gently, getting up off the chair and walking over to her mother, turning her around and hugging her. Her mother hugged her back tightly and began crying.
The Face of It Page 13