Clean

by Juno Dawson

  As we plod back through the stables, I see Elaine struggling with a fearsome colt. He’s absolutely the most handsome horse I’ve ever seen – hide the colour of rippling silver – an almost platinum shade. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t want to be saddled up. He sidesteps awkwardly, tossing his head back and forth.

  ‘Hi, darling, could you just hang back for a minute?’ Elaine calls to me.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I dismount Patty, keeping a hold on her reins. ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine.’ Elaine doesn’t look fine, she looks red-faced and irritated. ‘It’s just Storm being, frankly, a man.’

  Once I’ve untacked Patty and made sure she’s had a good drink, I find Elaine still struggling with Storm. He’s now pacing the training ring uncertainly, clearly stressed. Elaine has backed off, hands up in surrender. ‘What’s his problem?’ I ask, climbing on to the bottom rung of the fence that runs around the ring.

  ‘He’s an arsehole,’ Elaine says, joining me at the fence.

  ‘Fair.’

  ‘I adopted him from a friend of mine on the mainland. She bought him for her daughter, but it’s pretty clear he’s not child-friendly. I said I’d see what I could do, but I think some horses just aren’t made to be rode.’

  ‘Did they break him in?’

  ‘No. He’s almost three now. I think he might be a lost cause.’

  ‘Don’t let the doctors hear you say that.’

  She laughs. ‘Quite! I’d settle for him letting me take his saddle off. Shall we gang up on him?’

  In the end – with a couple of carrots – we entice him to the fence. I distract him with food while Elaine promptly whips his tack off. He takes the bait but there’s some real fury in those black eyes of his. ‘That’ll do for today,’ she says. ‘Thank you so much, Lexi. Hadn’t you better be getting back for supper?’

  I remember Melissa’s leaving dinner. I think I’d be in their way. I shake my head. ‘Nah, I’m saddle sore. I want a bath and some room service.’

  Elaine smiles. ‘Well, that sounds rather lovely. Now, run along. It’ll soon be dark and I don’t want you getting lost in the forest.’

  She’s the first person in a long time who’s treated me like a little girl. Weirdly, I don’t mind.

  I can’t sleep.

  My bones feel hollow and my blood synthetically blue like that stuff they pour on sanitary towels in adverts.

  I feel hosed down, bleached and disinfected. Sterilised.

  Pure and clean. White tiles and enamel.

  Like a hospital. Like the hospital: corridors and machines, tubes and bleeps.

  No, don’t go there. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about her.

  I roll over. I flip the pillow so it’s cooler.

  Why can’t I sleep?

  I stare at the ceiling, indigo grey. If I look too long, I can see faces in the shadows.

  I don’t want the telly on. Can’t focus on a book; the letters crawl like ants at a picnic.

  It feels like there’s static under my skin; electricity. My feet and fingers twitch with it.

  I’m awake and I can’t stand it.

  I wonder if they’d give me a sleeping pill if I asked.

  No. Of course they won’t. Not even a Nytol Herbal.

  I feel stretched, taut like an elastic band, ready to ping across the room.

  I dig my nails into the bedsheet and claw at it.

  I want to slow it down.

  I want the edges filed off.

  I want something.

  I need something.

  I start to cry and bury my face in the pillow in case a nurse is listening at my door.

  ‘So, tell me about your family,’ Dr Goldstein says. Today Dr Ahmed hasn’t joined us.

  ‘Isn’t that a little predictable?’ I ask, cradling a coffee mug the size of my head. I must have got some sleep, but it was so reedy, so shallow I don’t feel the benefit of it at all. Little birds twitter just outside the window and I wish they’d shut up. What have they got to be so cheerful about? Beaky little twats. Christ, I’m in a foul mood. Yes, even more so than normal.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Come on . . . “Blame the parents”? Really?’

  ‘Should I?’

  I laugh. ‘Probably. They’re not perfect; not even close. I figured that one out when I was about twelve. OK, my dad. My dad is stubborn, he lies, he treats women like shit. My mum is a drama queen, she’s selfish, she’s insecure . . . shall I go on?’

  ‘Those are very mature observations.’

  ‘Hon, you’re not my first therapist.’

  He smiles. ‘Well, why don’t you tell me how you arrived at these conclusions?’

  Because I’d rather die.

  If we pull this thread, the whole sad jumper’s gonna unravel.

  When I was about ten, Daddy made me and Nikolai have a Russian tutor. Like he felt it was important for us to connect with our heritage or something. The tutor was kinda cute in a dorky way – he was finishing his Masters at UCL I think.

  ‘Something Russian,’ I said, and he told me I’d done very well. So impressed was he that he said I should go and tell Daddy.

  We had our lessons on the terrace restaurant of the Vauxhall hotel and I knew Daddy would be in his office on the ninth floor – the executive suites. So off I went, skipping into the lift and down the corridors. As I got nearer, I heard voices coming from within and just assumed he was in a meeting or something. I knocked and opened the door, just a crack.

  I caught him with one of the waitresses – I can’t even remember her name. Do I need to tell you what they were doing on the desk? No? OK.

  He chased after me. ‘Lexi,’ he told me. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I lied.

  ‘I was just helping Vanessa –’ that was her name, Vanessa – ‘with a problem. A grown-up problem. She was very sad, so Daddy gave her a hug. That’s all.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, chewing on the end of a plait. I was ten, we’d had sex education at school and also, I’m not an imbecile. I knew precisely what they were doing.

  ‘Now, Lexi, it’s very important you don’t tell your Mummy what you saw. It would make her sad. She would not understand. We don’t want to make Mummy sad, do we?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed at once.

  However, what poor Daddy didn’t know was the briefing I’d had from my mother a year or two earlier. She sat on the toilet seat sipping a cocktail while I was in a bubble bath, again in our suite at the hotel. ‘Alexandria, malysh,’ she said. Mother’s accent is much stronger than Daddy’s because she grew up in Siberia while he’s lived in London almost his whole life. ‘I want you to do for me little job. Can you do that for Mummy?’ She took a sip of her vodka martini. Her acrylic nails, although expensive, looked so cheap.

  ‘Yes!’ I said, still so eager to please the adults in my life. At that point, I thought they were worth pleasing.

  ‘Good.’ Mum was runner-up Miss USSR 1989, but now she’s had two facelifts; monthly Botox; a nose job; one boob job to make them bigger; another to make them perkier; and dermal fillers every few months in her lips and cheeks. She’s got that ‘surgery look’, like she’s wearing a puffy papier-mâché head. Her hair is always platinum blonde, and you will never, ever see even a millimetre of dark root poking through. ‘Listen, I want you straight away to tell me if you see Daddy talking ever to other ladies. Do you understand?’

  I was confused. ‘Which other ladies?’

  ‘Pretty ones. Pretty and young ones. You just tell Mummy.’

  And so I did. It became a bath time ritual. I’d feed the information back to Mum and wait for her eyes to light up. I was programmed like Pavlov’s dogs. Tell Mummy a secret, get the reward. The next day we’d go to Hamleys or Harrods and she’d buy me a new toy or a dress.

  One night, just before the divorce circus came to town, they were screaming at each other in Russian. I crouched underneath the grand piano, absorbing as much as I could li
ke a sponge. Kids that age are like radars – they hear everything. I could only pick out the English bits of it, but Mummy was yelling one word over and over: proof, now she had proof. She was going to take everything, the hotel, the money, the cars, the jet. Us. We were about fifth down the list. From where I was, I saw their legs pacing back and forth, vodka sloshing over the rim of Mummy’s glass as she waved it in Daddy’s face.

  When I heard something smash – probably one of them hurling their drink at the wall – I slipped out from my hiding place. Quiet as a mouse, I tiptoed down the corridor and knocked lightly on Nikolai’s door.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  I opened the door a few inches and slipped through the gap. ‘They woke me up,’ I said.

  Nikolai, who’d have been about fourteen, shuffled to one side of his bed. ‘For god’s sake, Lexi, you’re such a baby.’ He made a show of seeming annoyed, but he was happy I’d come in, I could tell. I ran over to his bed and wriggled in.

  ‘I hate it when they’re like this.’

  ‘Grow up. All parents argue.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘Charlotte’s mum and dad hold hands and kiss each other in public.’

  ‘Exactly – in public. Who knows what they do when they’re not in public.’

  We lay side by side, not saying anything else. Mummy screamed about sluts and whores and bitches. ‘Do you think they’ll get divorced?’ I finally said.

  ‘No,’ Nik said quickly. ‘Maybe. Maybe it would be better if they did . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t!’ I cried out louder than I’d intended to. Sure, we’d had nannies and tutors our whole life, but everything always felt shaky until it was just the four of us. That was when I felt normal. That was when I could sleep soundly.

  ‘Lexi, get real. They hate each other.’

  ‘No they don’t!’

  ‘They do. You can only truly hate someone you used to love.’ I remember thinking about that for a long time and not getting it. I get it now. ‘What’s the point of them being together if all they’re going to do is fight all the time?’

  I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t relax unless we were all together; that I didn’t like not knowing where we all were; knowing we were all safe; but I said nothing.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Nik went on, ‘we’d still see both of them. We’ll be fine.’ I don’t know which of us he was trying to convince.

  My little head was whirring like an engine. Where would Mummy go? She wouldn’t be able to stay in the hotel – and despite her threats there was no way she was getting her hands on them. Would we go with her? Would one of them take me, and one take Nikolai? The thought alone made me feel nauseous.

  ‘They’re stupid,’ Nik said suddenly. ‘It’s all about money. He doesn’t want her to get his money and she wants as much as she can get. That’s what all of this is about, you know. It’s not about us, it’s about money.’

  He looked so angry. I didn’t want to know that information. I was happier not knowing, but I guess their fighting was like toxic waste, seeping through the carpets and dribbling down the walls. It got to us both. Radiation sickness.

  ‘You won’t leave me, will you, Nik?’

  He turned to me. ‘No. No way. We’ll be fine. Don’t tell anyone I said this, but you and me are gonna have to stick together. Whatever happens.’

  That made me feel better. ‘Whatever happens.’

  We shook hands. ‘Now go to sleep,’ he told me. ‘They’ll still be here in the morning.’

  But he was wrong. In the morning, Daddy was already sleeping in a different penthouse.

  OK, I know I’m tired and emotional because the memory of that night makes my eyes sting. ‘Would you like a tissue?’ Goldstein asks.

  ‘No, I’m cool.’

  ‘You don’t have to be brave in our sessions, Lexi. There’s no one else here.’

  ‘You’re here.’

  ‘I don’t count.’

  I shrug. ‘That’s it, really. Big long ugly divorce. This was before pre-nups, but they’d both had detectives following each other for years. They were both unfaithful but, in the end, she got a decent settlement: eighty million and the New York apartment.’

  Inevitable question: ‘And how did that make you feel?’

  Thinking about the night in Nikolai’s room has left me feeling exposed, like a kitten clinging to a branch too high in a tree. ‘Well, we saw it coming, didn’t we?’

  ‘That doesn’t make it any less painful.’

  ‘God, whose parents aren’t divorced?’

  ‘Again, that doesn’t make it any less painful to you.’

  I smile. ‘I really don’t think it’s that simple, do you? “Her parents split up so she became a drug addict.” Like, really?’

  He holds his hands apart, surrendering. ‘You’re quite right, of course. It’s never that simple. But I’d like you to tell me more about that “shaky” feeling, that feeling of not being able to relax when you were apart from your family. Did that ever go away?’

  I think about it. I rifle through the mess in my head and wonder if it’s still there under unopened credit card bills, memories, blackouts, and scraps of paper with numbers on. ‘No. Probably not. I think I probably got used to it. Maybe that’s when you become a grown-up – when you stop feeling safe.’

  After the session, I’m allowed to check my phone again. This time there’s a text from Kurt.

  Call me whenever, babe. Phone will be on.

  I’m not going to get another chance until tomorrow so I dial him up immediately.

  It rings.

  And rings.

  And rings.

  It rings again.

  And then he answers. ‘Babe.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Kurt,’ I say, suddenly filled with sulphuric rage. ‘Where the fucking hell have you been?’ I’m crying and I don’t know why. Today is too much.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. When you called yesterday my phone was on silent and I was passed out. I’m sorry.’

  That calms me down a bit. ‘Where are you?’ I regret asking such a needy bitch question. But if he is with some other skank, I’ll kill him.

  ‘I’m still at Jack and Helena’s place. They’re in Dubai so I’m looking after it for them.’

  ‘Are you alone?’ Neeeeeeeedy bitch.

  ‘Yes, I’m alone. Fuck, Lex, it’s good to hear from you. I was worried sick. You OK?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘He, like, proper kidnapped you.’

  I laugh a snotty laugh and wipe my nose on my sleeve. ‘Kurt, I’m in rehab.’

  He chuckles. ‘No, no, no. How is it?’

  ‘It’s so not The One.’

  ‘Do they strap you to the bed?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘It’s not an asylum. It’s like being at a hotel. A hotel with no booze.’

  ‘You can’t even drink? Jesus.’

  ‘Babe, it’s rehab. I am surrounded by sketchy addicts. Seriously, they’re all batshit crazy.’

  ‘When are you getting out?’

  ‘I don’t know. How long have I been gone? It’s meant to be a seventy-day programme, so like, another two months.’

  ‘What? Really?’

  ‘I know!’ I’m not sure how to phrase the next question. So I just ask. ‘Are you still getting high?’

  A pause. ‘Not last night.’ Well that answers that question. Shit, I can’t get into it now. ‘Just do as they say and get back here, yeah?’ he says, and for him, saying that’s a big deal. It’s enough.

  ‘I am doing. And I’m . . . I’m clean now. It might not be a bad thing.’ He’s silent and I carry on all in a rush. ‘Like, I was a hot mess. I legit thought I was going to die, it wasn’t funny.’ Still silence. ‘We’ll talk about it when I get back.’

  ‘Tell you what . . .’ he says slowly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I miss you like mad, babe.’

  That’s all I really needed to hear. I close my eyes
but not before another tear squeaks out.

  We’re in Group.

  Come on, ladies, let’s get in Therapy Formation. Ahmed’s in charge today, but Goldstein looks on – Brady, Kendall, Ruby, Guy and then me, hovering like the angel of death, dressed head to toe in black Saint Laurent.

  Ruby is telling us about her father. Her father, it turns out, is Dr Russell Kidd. He’s the senator for New York State but he’s often talked about as ‘The Next Obama’. I knew he had daughters from the news, but I’ve never seen him with Ruby.

  ‘So is your mum . . . Diandra Jordan?’ I ask. I know next to nothing about sport but everyone knows Diandra Jordan. When we were kids, she won every sprinting gold medal at every Olympics. She’s who you’d pretend to be on Sports Day.

  ‘Nah,’ Ruby says, ‘she’s my stepmom. Daddy and my mom got married when they were real young, straight outta college.’

  I had no idea he had a whole other family before the one I’ve seen on TV.

  ‘Thanks to Daddy, we have nurses and stuff, but I had to help with Mom,’ Ruby explains. ‘She’s pretty sick sometimes. Sickle-cell anaemia. When my friends were out getting tanked at parties and stuff, I stayed home with her. I’m a straight-A student, man, I got no time for pills and shit, but there’s always food, right? Like, you can eat as much food as you want and no one cares. I could still study, I could look after Mom, I could see Daddy and Diandra and the kids. Everyone eats, it’s cool.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Kendall mutters under her breath next to me on the sofa.

  ‘When do you think it became a problem?’ Dr Ahmed asks.

  Ruby shrugs. ‘I dunno. Like, I was always kinda juicy so I don’t think anyone noticed, maybe not even me. I think it probably started like when I noticed I was bigger than some of the other girls. Maybe when I was about eleven. I started to eat more at night when Mom was asleep. I’d sneak downstairs and sit next to the fridge. But I wouldn’t take too much; I didn’t need the staff telling Mom I was stealing food.’ She takes a breath. ‘That’s something that drives me crazy, man. People thinking I eat all day and all night. As if! When you look like I do, you do everything you can to not eat in front of people. Otherwise they call you a fat pig and ignorant shit like that.’