by Laura Marney
‘Yeah.’
‘Who was the woman?’
‘It was Isabelle.’
‘No!’
I somehow felt that this wasn’t as shocking to Chloe as she was making out but at least she was kind enough to empathise.
‘Isabelle, our childminder. My mum’s best friend.’
‘Yeah. I know who Isabelle is,’ Chloe assured me. ‘Bitch.’
‘Venga!’ Sanj called.
‘In a minute, you pervert!’ Chloe yelled.
‘I shouted at them. I told them I was going to tell Mum. Isabelle begged me not to but Dad told her to go home. He practically threw me in the car.’
‘Bastard.’
‘He was driving and shouting at me and then he had another heart attack. That’s when he crashed. He wouldn’t have had that heart attack if I hadn’t threatened to tell Mum.’
‘Oh Alison,’ Chloe said opening her arms and enfolding me. ‘You didn’t kill him, none of that was your fault. He almost killed you. Then he lay dead on you with his fucking eyeball dripping. And you never did tell your mom, did you?’
I shook my head.
‘You were only a kid. It’s not your fault if he got caught with his dick where it shouldn’t have been.’
‘I know.’
‘That’s what men are, that’s the way it is, even that scuzzball over there, they’re all the same.’
‘I know.’
We went quiet and I stayed in her arms a while.
‘Come on,’ she said eventually, ‘don’t let it get to you, it’s all in the past now. Your dad is dead and he got what he deserved, huh?’
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed, sniffing.
‘Por favor!’ wailed Sanj.
‘Let’s get outta here,’ said Chloe, ‘Let’s get some churros and go home, okay?’
‘Yeah.’
I went back to the bed to find my shoes. Sanj was speaking to me but I ignored him. Chloe was right, he was a scuzzball, they all were. As I sat on the bed pulling on my shoes I became aware of a warm wetness beneath me.
‘Och Jeezo,’ I said, disgusted, ‘he’s pissed the bed. That must have been what he was shouting about.’
‘Well he shouldn’t have been so quick to tie himself up then, huh? Stupid sicko.’
‘Eeeuw,’ I screeched, ‘look, he’s hard! I didn’t think guys could do that.’
‘Oh, guys can do lots of weird things. Probably gets off on soiling himself. Watch out, he’ll take a dump in a minute. Filthy pig,’ said Chloe. ‘There’s gotta be some more coke around here. Hey Sanj!’ she yelled, ‘donde esta la cocaina?’
Sanj yelled something back at her and began wriggling around again. As he moved a warm fizzy smell of urine rose up.
Chloe came out of the kitchenette and stood over Sanj.
‘Digame,’ she said softly.
Sanj wouldn’t tell her.
‘Digame!’ she demanded.
She walked back to the kitchen and began again searching the drawers. I’d found my right shoe but when I looked under the bed the left shoe had rolled to the other side of the bed. I walked around the bed to get it.
‘Pay dirt!’ I heard Chloe shout.
Sanj was shouting and wriggling around looking like he’d break an arm to get out of the restraint.
‘Yippee! Look what I found,’ Chloe squealed.
I turned and smiled. She held up a bag of coke the size of a brick. Sanj was going crazy. From the kitchenette Chloe waved the bag at Sanj, teasing him. I bent down to dig out my shoe from under the bed and as I came up Sanj headbutted me in the face.
My nose exploded. I couldn’t do anything. Sanj was screaming. I wanted to call for Chloe but I had forgotten how. There was a stinging behind my eyes. A buzzing in my head. I couldn’t see anything. My hands were in front of my face. I touched my nose and cheeks but there was no sensation. My face was numb. Sanj was screaming and screaming. I didn’t want him to scream. The neighbours might hear him. Someone might call the police. Slowly I took my hands away from my face but this only made Sanj scream more. The white sheet and Sanj’s brown skin were spotted with my gushing red blood. I tried to call for Chloe but all that came out of me was a grunt. Chloe stuck her head out of the kitchenette and when she saw me came rushing over.
‘Oh my God, Alison, are you okay? What happened?’
I still couldn’t speak. I was too confused to form words, but I made another noise.
‘He hit you?’ Chloe sounded like she wasn’t sure. I knew she must be wondering how someone so restrained could inflict such damage. ‘You hit her?’
Sanj was still screaming. I nodded yes. Yes he hit me. I wanted her to stop him screaming.
She punched him in the face. That quietened him. My breath came back. Now I found I could talk.
‘He headbutted me.’
I could talk but my mouth was full of blood.
‘Honey, let’s get you cleaned up,’ said Chloe, putting her arm around me.
I wanted to explain how unfair this was. I hadn’t done anything to him. I hadn’t taken his coke. I’d only done what he’d asked of us. Chloe put a cloth to my face to help mop up the blood.
Chloe sat on the dry side of the bed and spoke to Sanj softly, as though she were reading a child a bedtime story.
‘Hey, you little shit,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all about you, isn’t it? You want us to tie you up and play your sick little games, huh? You have kilos of coke in that drawer and you’re too fucking mean to give a girl an orgasm or a little line of coke.’
Sanj, with a wide-eyed stare, didn’t take his eyes off her.
‘But you crossed the line, buddy. You see what you did to her?’
Chloe turned to look at me and Sanj followed her stare. I took the cloth away from my face. It was Sanj’s T-shirt. I could smell him off it. I retched and threw it on the floor.
‘You hurt her, and you’re gonna have to pay,’ said Chloe. She jabbed Sanj under the chin with the handle end of the whip. He choked and when she did it a second time, Sanj started screaming again.
I didn’t want him to scream.
‘Shut up!’ I hissed in his face, spraying blood.
Up this close I felt his breath on my skin and smelled the piss.
‘He’s making me sick,’ I told Chloe.
‘Yeah, I can’t look at his perverted face any more,’ she said.
She pulled the pillowcase off the pillow and put it over his head. With the bag over his head it was easier. Blood soaked through the pillowcase from the inside. He wriggled, the sack head moving from side to side like a scarecrow in a fairground House of Horrors.
‘Go on,’ said Chloe, ‘hit him.’
The screaming was quieter now, muffled by the pillowcase but still he wouldn’t stop making noise. I had my hand balled into a fist, I didn’t even know I did until his head connected with it and sent a painful shock up my arm.
‘Uuh,’ I groaned, and cradled my throbbing hand. Now he’d hurt my face and my hand.
He pulled his head as far away from me as he could. He arched his back, thrusting his pathetic pants at us with his fat cock straining through the plastic.
‘Oh yeah, you like that, don’t you? You sick fuck!’ said Chloe delivering an uppercut to the punch bag.
I punched once more, with the heel of my other hand, into the pillow case. He sighed and expelled a moan.
‘Look, he’s come!’ Chloe said, her voice a disbelieving squeak. ‘Eeuuw!’
It was true, oozing out of the spaces in his pants and dripping on to the piss wet bed was the slimy evidence. The cock went limp, closely followed by the body which slid, satisfied, down the bed.
I’m not sure what happened after that. We hit him. I remember punching into the punch bag, punching and punching, my arms feeling heavy and tired, my face and hands throbbing, my heart pounding. I remember the still body on the bed, Chloe and me breathing hard in the quiet, the bloody pillowcase, the spurt of dark red across the vanilla wall. I remember us bot
h hurrying and running down the stairs and Chloe saying, ‘don’t stop, don’t stop’.
Chapter 46
We ran through Raval. In a narrow street we passed two Asian guys, beer vendors with four-pack bracelets on their wrists.
‘Hola, guapas!’ one of them said, laughing.
Chloe ran straight past them, too fast for them but they spread their arms wide as if they were going to scoop me up.
‘Dejala! dejala cabrones!’ Chloe screamed.
Their smiles faded, they parted and let me pass.
When we got home Chloe pulled my clothes off. I let her tug my arms out my sleeves and shove me under the shower. The water was hot but I felt cold. She scrubbed me. After the shower she gave me pills and held brandy to my lips and poured it into me. She put me to bed and pulled blankets out of the wardrobe and threw them over me. She tugged the blankets tight round me and cuddled into me.
‘I hate him,’ I sobbed, ‘I hate my dad, I fucking hate him.’
‘I know,’ said Chloe, holding me, ‘so do I.’
A strong smell of burning woke me. I hauled myself out of bed, groggy from the pills, and dragged myself as fast as I could towards the smell. It was raining outside and there was black smoke. Out on the terrace Chloe was burning something in the bin, poking it with a stick.
‘What are you burning?’ I asked.
‘Clothes,’ she said without looking at me.
I went back inside and sat on the couch, crouching forward with my arms folded, my legs crossed.
‘Where are the dogs?’ I asked her.
‘With Josep, don’t you remember? I told you last night. Jeez Alison, you have to try to hold it together.’
‘What happened?’ I sobbed.
‘You know what happened.’
‘We hit him, didn’t we?’
‘Yes we did.’
‘We hit him too much. We…’
I wept quietly but she didn’t shout at me again. Chloe sat with her mosaic box, fiddling with the small bits of tile, arranging a design for her chimney. After a while, I went to the bathroom and washed my face.
She was right. I did have to hold it together but I had to shrug off this wooziness first. I threw cold water on my face and took deep breaths. I looked in the bathroom mirror. My nose was twice its normal size. I had black swollen bags under my eyes.
‘We have to go back,’ I said when I returned to the living room.
‘What?’
‘We have to go back to Sanj’s, he’s tied up. He could choke or anything. We have to help him.’
‘Alison, stop. Stop right there. You know we…’
I didn’t want to hear what she was going to say. I ran out to the terrace and pulled the door closed behind me. I ran to the edge and tried to draw oxygen out of the heavy humid air. She followed me out.
‘Alison, come away from the edge.’
She said this is a calm soothing voice, like she was talking me down off the ledge.
‘Are you scared I’ll jump?’
‘No. But it’s slippy and the rain has gotten into the crack on the wall. It might not be safe.’
‘We have to go back, help him, make things right. I just want everything to be right again, please Chloe, we have to.’
‘We can’t help him now.’
I clamped my hand over my mouth.
‘We can’t go back there,’ she said simply. ‘They’ll be looking for us.’
‘I told you we shouldn’t go to Raval!’ I cried, ‘Every time I go there something bad happens. Didn’t I tell you we shouldn’t go to Raval?’
‘Yes,’ said Chloe, ‘you told me.’
‘Well, what are we going to do, Chloe?’
‘We’re gonna to stay here, lie low. Unless you still wanna move out?’
‘No!’
‘Well then, we’re gonna hold it together.’
‘Hold it together,’ I repeated.
‘That’s all we can do.’
‘I’ll make coffee,’ I whispered.
‘Good idea,’ said Chloe.
It rained on and off all day as Chloe continued working on her chimney. I brought out coffee and watched her work but she ignored me. After sunset she ran an extension cable out and plugged in a lamp and carried on working from the top rung of the ladders.
The chimney looked misshapen. Before she began it had been a normal, straight-sided chimney, but she had cemented a pregnant bulge on to one side giving it a lop-sided look. It didn’t look right to me but she’d started grouting the tiles now so this must be what she wanted it to look like.
Even though she wouldn’t talk to me, I stayed near her. Being out on the terrace in the rain with Chloe ignoring me was better than being inside on my own.
‘We should eat,’ she said finally, hands on hips, her face smeared with grout.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Well maybe not, but we have to eat. I’ll go down and get kebabs.’
‘No! Chloe, no, please don’t go out.’
‘You have to stop this. I’m only going down to the kebab shop. I’ll be gone five minutes.’
She went out and slammed the door.
I went back out to the terrace and looked over. I heard shouting on the street. Chloe was gone a long time. I was in the bedroom when I heard the front door bang open.
‘Alison?’ Chloe came into the bedroom, ‘I got you a kebab, come and eat.’
I followed her out to the living room. I’d thought I wasn’t hungry but when I opened the kebab I realised I was starving and gobbled it down like a dog. The brandy bottle was still on the table and I took a huge swig.
‘Feel better?’ said Chloe, smiling.
‘Yeah a bit. Want coffee?’
‘Not right now, thanks.
The brandy gave me courage to talk about it.
‘Those two guys.’
‘What two guys?’ Chloe snapped.
‘They saw me. They could identify me.’
‘They saw nothing! They saw two girls in the street going home after a night out, so what?’
‘They saw my face, how beat up I am. They saw my green eyes.’
‘Honey, your eyes are bruised black and blue.’
‘No, but I’m telling you, Chloe, it’s the green eyes. Esmeralda, that’s what Sanj called me. He noticed. They all do, I see it in their faces, they’re surprised I have green eyes.’
‘So you have green eyes, so they noticed! Big deal.’
‘Yeah, but those other men noticed them too, the men who were there when I found Bashed Head Boy. They got a good look at me. Now they’ll be looking for the same person for both.’
‘Esmeralda.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Think I’ll get back to the chimney,’ said Chloe, getting to her feet. ‘I wanna finish it before my dad gets into town.’
‘There was a lot of blood, wasn’t there?’
Chloe didn’t answer me.
‘Chloe, this is important, we need to talk about this. There was a lot of blood, wasn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘Yes, there was a lot of blood. Mostly yours.’
‘But was there any on the floor? Did I get any on my shoe?’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Did I leave a footprint?’
‘I don’t fucking know!’
‘I left a footprint the first time.’
‘Okay, enough. Stop talking crazy, what the fuck is this? What first time? A minute ago it was Esmeralda, now it’s a footprint?’
‘But Chloe…’
‘Yeah, I remember,’ she interrupted me, ‘your shoe left a print outside the guy’s flat, you told me.’
‘You know I had nothing to do with Bashed Head Boy. I didn’t even know him, I swear to you. I only walked up the stairs, that’s all!’
You’re not Esmeralda, and you’re not Cinderella, okay? You’re Alison, and you’re sooo losing the plot.’
Chapter 47
I couldn’t eat, I co
uldn’t sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw the body on the bed, the blood-stained hood. So I didn’t close them. I sat on the sofa watching Chloe out on the terrace. Hours would go by and I wouldn’t remember them passing, there would just be more mosaic on the chimney. At night Chloe insisted I get into bed but I didn’t sleep.
We were dealing with it in different ways, I recognised that. Chloe became obsessed with her chimney. The rain never let up for more than about an hour but it didn’t put her off. She set up a tent of clear thick plastic around the ladders to protect the tiling and worked under it.
‘It has to be finished by the time Aged P gets here,’ she said. ‘He says I never finish anything.’
‘But why d’you even care what your dad thinks of it?’
Chloe laughed, ‘I don’t know.’
For the next three days she did nothing but work on the chimney, stopping only to slurp from the coffee and biscuits I brought her or, after it got dark, to run down to the street to buy kebabs. I stayed in the bedroom while she was gone.
It was September now, winter was coming. I had never seen rain like this in Barcelona. I should be working by now but I couldn’t leave the flat. I missed my mum and brothers. I missed Scotland, I even missed Lisa and Lauren but how could I tell them what had happened? I missed them and yet I dreaded having to explain. It was just as well my phone was lost. I didn’t want to have to tell them, I just needed someone to understand.
Juegita. I missed her the most. She forgave me when poor Fanny got drowned, she wouldn’t judge me. I asked Chloe three times a day, I begged her to pick Juegita and the pups up from Josep but she refused.
‘I miss ‘em too but I need to get the chimney finished. I can’t have the pups running around under my feet.’
‘But if I keep them inside, Chloe, please. I’ll make sure they don’t come near the chimney.’
‘No. Anyhow, there’s something else. There are vendors everywhere. Walking around with eight dogs, that’s gonna attract attention.’
‘Mahmood!’ I groaned, ‘I told you Sanj was connected. Mahmood is his uncle. He’ll have every vendor in Barcelona looking for us. Looking for me.’
‘Don’t start with that again. I told you, we just have to hold it together until my dad gets here tomorrow. He’ll fix it. He knows people. Everything is gonna be fine. You just need to get some sleep.’