by Anna Maxted
When I ask him about the heath extension, he stares at me and says, ‘I’d do anything for you, Helen. I mean it.’
And I don’t bleat ‘Ah but you didn’t let me stay in your flat’ because now I understand. I gulp and whisper, ‘And me for you.’ (I am not so liberated as Tom because the full sentence ‘And I’d do anything for you too,’ sticks and although I want to say the words, they feel more comfortable in my head. Anyway, he seems content with the abbreviation.)
I keep gazing at him and grinning and thinking he likes me, and what the hell was I doing rejecting his advances like a cat refusing cream. We smile at each other until our mouths ache. And until I catch Luke’s eye across the table and he immediately opens his mouth wide (without bothering to swallow the chewed up burger inside it) and sticks a finger into the gunk to communicate his repulsion at the fact his closest female friend and one of the lads have mutated from normal decent people into a nauseating pair of twittering lovebirds.
Tom sees Luke and tauntingly feeds me a chip, mouth to mouth. Luke puts his head in his hands as if in great sorrow. Tom sighs and says, ‘You know he’s going to blackmail me for ever?’ and I nod and say, ‘So, can we have sex later?’ and he grins. I promptly stand up, scraping my chair. Tom looks at me, raises an eyebrow, and jumps to his feet – and a waiter brings in a huge pink birthday cake and we all have to sing happy birthday dear Lizzy. Tom and I squawk it with gusto. We are exchanging sneaky ‘shall we, now?’ looks when I glance across the table to see if anyone has noticed and catch sight of Tina.
And the happiness drains away. She looks terrified. Cringing, servile, like a starving dog. She is sipping water and her hand is shaking. She won’t look up. The person to her left has given up trying to engage her in conversation and is talking to the person on his left. The person to her right is to blame. Adrian is dapper in a pale green shirt and a beautifully cut dark grey suit and his teeth are whiter than white and his blond hair is styled just so. He is in animated chat with the woman next to him. He touches her hand, lightly, to emphasise a point, and she throws back her head and laughs prettily. I want to stab her.
‘What’s wrong?’ says Tom, following my line of vision.
‘Oh, er, nothing,’ I say. ‘I think Lizzy’s on to us. We’d better, ah, save it for later.’
Tom glances at me and says, ‘Something’s wrong.’
I shake my head and say, ‘I’m just going to talk to Liz for a sec, you’ll be alright, won’t you?’ At this point, Luke appears behind Tom and tries to poke a bean in his ear, and Tom shouts with laughter, grabs his wrist and twists it so that Luke is forced to his knees.
I grab my chance and hurry over to Tina. I say ‘hi’ and she looks horrified. She says feebly, ‘I see you and Tom got it together.’
I smile and say ‘yeah!’ and ‘why don’t you come over and have a chat?’
Tina glares at me as Adrian swivels round, an ingratiating smile tacked to his face, and croons, ‘Helen! How excellent to see you! You look terrific. And I love your top, it’s so you.’
Much as I’d like to spit in his eye, I can see Tina quaking, so I force the corners of my mouth upwards and say, ‘Yes, it’s a nice top.’
I pause and add, ‘Don’t let me interrupt you – I was just about to drag Tina over my side of the table for a sec to see Tom and Luke.’
Adrian’s smile remains fixed as he replies, ‘We’d love to, but’ – show glance at the Tag Heuer – ‘my lady’s been nagging on all night about being exhausted, so I’m sweeping her home to beddybyes, right now. Rouse yourself, darling, the cab’s waiting outside!’
Tina stands up like a robot and says in a strained voice, ‘Goodnight, Helen.’
They kiss and hug Lizzy, then leave. I can’t relax. Lizzy skips over and says that she and Brian and some others are going on to a club and would I like to come too. She adds quickly that she won’t be offended if I wouldn’t. I start to apologise but she squeezes my shoulder, nods towards Tom, and whispers, ‘Be happy.’
Tom sees that people are dispersing and he turns to me and says bashfully, ‘Would you like to share a cab?’
I reply, ‘Of course.’
Luke sticks his head between us and exclaims, ‘Great! I’ll cadge a lift!’ Tom and I glare at him and Luke smiles and says, ‘What?’ then, ‘Don’t worry, you can drop me off first!’
Tom growls, ‘You got that right!’
We tumble into the street and Tom hails a taxi. Luke puts his feet up and lights a fag, and Tom strokes my hand and says, ‘You’ve gone quiet.’
I nod. I can’t speak. There is nothing on this earth I want more than to tape up Luke’s mouth and drop him at Swiss Cottage then speed home with Tom and tear off his clothes and make mad passionate love on the hallway floor and then again on the lounge table. I need it. I need to make love to Tom, to feel that connection, like I need to breathe.
But how can I knowing that Tina’s gone home with Adrian?
If this is a bright shiny new beginning, I want it to be perfect. I think of my friend’s terror and the thought impedes my libido. What’s he doing to her now? It pains me to consider it. There’s no option. I tap Tom on the leg and tell him the truth about Tina and Adrian.
Then I divert the cab to Tooting and I pray we get there in time.
Chapter 41
ALTHOUGH I LOOK odd in a bikini and inevitably get burnt to a crisp, I love beaches. I like watching the sea and thinking unchallenging thoughts like ‘Wow, all that water’, or ‘God, the sea’s really big.’ I like seeing the waves froth and fizzle on the shore. Or digging my feet into the warm sand and feeling it grainy between my toes. I love looking for shells – those curly ones like tiny unicorn horns – and smooth grey pebbles with white streaks of marble running through. I love closing my eyes and listening to the crashing waves and people’s laughter. And smelling the salty air, tasting it on my lips. My favourite thing is to paddle in clear water, searching for gold. I’ll see a glinting speck, and try to pinch it up. Of course it never is gold, just another grain of sand made shimmery by sun and water. But I don’t mind because the joy is all in the seeking.
That’s not how I feel when I lose Tom though. After all that searching I stumble on gold and let it slip through my fingers like sand.
Yet as we hurtle to Tina’s defence like a squadron of black knights, there isn’t a clue it will end like it does. I burble out the sorry tale and Tom says, ‘Fuck!’ and asks a thousand questions. Luke splutters and says, ‘I don’t get it.’ They bristle and say poor poor Tina, and Adrian’s got it coming to him.
‘This isn’t a boy’s adventure game,’ I say stonily, because I’m terrified of what I’ve started.
Tom says, ‘Helen, we’re only going to check she’s okay. You’re right to be looking out for Tina. We won’t do anything stupid.’ He squeezes my hand.
Luke adds earnestly, ‘You did the right thing.’ I’m not sure I have.
I soon change my mind. When the taxi stops outside Tina’s flat – ‘Adrian drives a Beamer!’ squawks Luke, ‘how dare he?’ – and we tumble into the street, I can hear the screams. A vile miracle, as my heart pounds loud enough to deafen me. Luke wants to kick the door down, but Tom doesn’t want to give Adrian warning. We sneak in the main door via the woman who lives downstairs. Curiously – or rather, uncuriously – she doesn’t ask who we are. Then again, her neighbour is screaming like a pig who’s just been offered his cousin in a bacon roll, and that doesn’t bother her so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
We clump upstairs and Tom rings the doorbell. A whimper, a rustle, then silence. He rings again. He stands with his back to the door so if Adrian looks through the peephole he can’t see who’s there. ‘Who is it?’ barks a tense voice.
Tom barks back, ‘Are you the owner of the black Z3 outside with slashed tyres—’
There is a loud exclamation and a clack-clack of bolts being drawn and Adrian rips open the door and as he does so Tom gives it a hefty boot and Adrian staggers
backwards. Tom and I rush to Tina, who is cowering in the corner. Luke flings himself at Adrian in what I presume is a textbook rugby tackle – or maybe he just trips on the edge of the rug – and before I can say ‘harder than that’, is sprawled on top of him and shaking him so that Adrian’s head makes a pleasing bonk-bonk-bonk sound on the floor.
When Tom sees the state of Tina his face goes taut. Adrian asks what the fuck’s going on and bleats that we’ve misunderstood the situation and Tina and he were merely having a tiff and yelp! Adrian’s rant ends swiftly as Tom squeezes an apparently sensitive point on his neck. ‘Shut up,’ says Tom in a hard voice. Adrian shuts up. I ring the police on my mobile as the phone has been ripped from the wall and Tom runs to fetch ice and a towel for Tina. Adrian is struggling for breath under fifteen-stone of Luke, so the sterling effort my friend has put into building himself up on pepperoni pizza and chicken korma and cheese & onion crisps for the last decade is paying off beautifully. ‘Tina,’ yodels Luke from his elevated position, ‘are you okay?’
Tina has seven fresh cigarette burns on her stomach and is far from okay. Her head wound has re-opened. Tom strokes her hair out of her face and gently dabs at the blood trickling down her forehead. He says, ‘Christ, Tina, this is terrible. You don’t have to put up with this.’ In a quivering voice she jokes that she won’t be wearing a crop top this summer then starts crying and clinging to me and Tom.
‘Tina,’ I say, trying not to cry myself, ‘I had to, I couldn’t leave it any longer, I’m sorry.’
When the police arrive Tina stops weeping and freezes. The police want to hear what happened from all of us, but especially from Tina.
‘Please say,’ I urge her. ‘Be brave. We’re all here.’ She quakes and glances at Adrian who stares ahead like he thinks he’s the Maida Vale Terminator.
Silence. Tina says nothing and I hold my breath. Luke steps forward and Tina jumps but he only wants to offer her a scrumpled piece of toilet paper on which to blow her nose. ‘I’ve only used it once,’ he explains kindly.
Luke’s gentleness steels her. After much snuffling and gulping, Tina points at her boyfriend and says, ‘He – Adrian – he said cigs are bad for me, which they are. He, he st-stubbed them out on my belly.’
The male officer – whose stern expression is compensation for a faceful of freckles – writes this down in his notebook. Then Tina goes quiet so the female officer, a woman with bright yellow hair and a steel aura, ushers her into the next room. Freckles turns to Adrian. Adrian starts to say, in his plummiest, chummiest voice, that Tina has a drink problem. To my great joy, Freckles cuts in with, ‘Right now I don’t want to hear your explanation.’
I want to tell Freckles that Tina has stuck to orange juice ever since Adrian nearly drowned her for ‘flirting’ with a guy in the pub (as if Tina would ever fancy a man in a boiler suit). But I don’t want to be reprimanded in front of Adrian so I save it for later. Instead, I point out the ashtray full of stubs which, I assume, are riddled with Adrian’s fingerprints, even though he doesn’t smoke. Freckles obligingly pours the stubs into a plastic bag and I whisper excitedly to Tom, ‘I saw this on The Bill. Even if it’s not forensically tight, it’s circumstantial evidence!’
I then go into the kitchen because Tina wants me with her. I sit at the kitchen table while Blondie takes pictures of Tina’s stomach and scalp with a Polaroid camera. She seems to understand that Tina is overwhelmed by her presence and its implications and says firmly, ‘You’re doing the right thing, love. You’ve done nothing wrong. This isn’t what should happen in a normal relationship.’
I’m not sure if I’m allowed to talk, so I nod supportively behind Blondie’s back, and try not to retch at the sight of Tina’s injuries. Blondie then tells me to take Tina to hospital. I ring for a cab. Then I think sod it, I’m busting to give a statement and I will. I haven’t been so keen to blab since I overheard Laetitia one lunchtime making hushed enquiries about liposuction.
Blondie indulges me and I dictate until she shakes her hand as if she’s got cramp. I feel frustrated because I am forced to admit that I have never actually seen Adrian lay a finger on my friend. ‘I’ve seen the results though,’ I say fiercely, and then, ‘Aren’t you going to take a statement from Tina?’
She says she’ll get a statement from Tina tomorrow morning. Tina, who’s gone as quiet as a mouse in felt slippers, nods. Tom and Luke also give short statements. As the cab arrives, the Blondie marches downstairs to interview Tina’s neighbour (which I am spitefully pleased about) and Freckles says to Adrian, ‘I’m arresting you for assault occasioning actual bodily harm,’ and handcuffs him.
‘Careful of my cufflinks!’ Adrian snaps which – I am delighted to note – doesn’t go down well. Freckles becomes, if anything, less careful of Adrian’s cufflinks. Adrian shoots me a bully-boy look and I taunt him with a curly-fingered wave. I am hoping to goad him into saying something incriminating like ‘Honest, officer, I hardly touched her!’ but Adrian isn’t stupid. He doesn’t say a word. I was also hoping to hear a hearty boom of ‘You’re nicked!’ but the heartwarming sight of Adrian in chains will do nicely. He and his Savile Row suit are to spend the night in a police cell and tomorrow morning he’ll be interviewed. Then he’ll be up in court.
And, if I might borrow a phrase from Nana Flo, not before time.
Tom wraps Tina in a blanket because she’s shivering and carries her to the cab. All the way to the hospital we tell her well done and she’s so brave and this is the end of Adrian. Tina doesn’t seem to hear. She mutters into her hands, ‘I’m so ashamed.’ Tom and Luke and I chorus, ‘Don’t be!’ and Tina smiles because we sound like berks then winces because her stomach hurts.
In Casualty, the baby-faced doctor says as if he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing, ‘Your boyfriend did this?’
Tina replies, as if this explains everything, ‘I smoke.’
The doctor – who has piercing green eyes and might have sprung from ER if only he had more colour in his cheeks – looks suspiciously at Luke. Luke has appointed himself Tina’s bodyguard and is standing beside her with a bulldog expression and folded arms.
‘It wasn’t me!’ he blurts. ‘I’m Luke! I’m looking after her!’ Tina smiles at him tearily and Tom smiles at me. I glance at my watch and discover it’s 3.23 a.m. – which means we waited in Dante’s Hell, sorry, Casualty for three hours. Peely walls. I feel a swell of exhaustion. I mutter that I’m going outside for a second.
I stumble towards the door. The thickly sweet smell of A & E is having an effect on my ability to breathe. And the swingy hospital doors, with their neat rectangular glass windows, the bright glaring lights, and the screeching children, and the shouty drunks, and the old people shuffling down grey clinical corridors, and the rushing staff in white and blue and sensible shoes, the whole lot converges and spins around my head like a small tornado and I am watching my father die again and the monitor is bleeping and curtains are being pulled and trolleys being pushed and I’m being yanked away and there are screams of ‘he’s arresting’ and my mother is wailing and my father died and I sat there and missed it and I never told him I loved him because I couldn’t say the words. The blood drains from my head and I feel nauseous and tottery. I need to sit down or be sick and I’m not sure which so I collapse on a bench – next to a ragged man swigging from a bottle – then I say ‘Urgh’ and vomit on to the pavement. Understandably, the man moves to another bench.
I clutch the side of the bench while the world sways. Then Tom is holding my hair off my face and rubbing my back while I retch and spit. I keep retching. Loudly. ‘Romantic, this,’ I mutter, the latest burp ringing in my ears as I stare down at a yellow puddle of bitty sick.
‘Nah,’ replies Tom cheerfully, ‘this is nostalgic for me. It reminds me of our first date.’
I would look at him to laugh but I have dribble on my chin. I wipe it on my Ay Carumba sleeve. ‘How’s Tina?’ I say.
‘Still in shock, I think,’ says To
m. ‘She said she felt bad about Adrian. But the doctor wasn’t having any of it. He told her men like Adrian don’t change. He was kind but straight down the line. I hope he made some impact, poor Tina. Oh and Luke’s in love. He wants to stay and guard her.’
My eyes bulge. ‘Luke’s in love!’ I squeak.
Tom grins and nods. ‘Very,’ he says. My brain is twisting in an attempt to absorb this when Tom adds, ‘Has Tina got family? Do you think someone should phone her parents?’
I joke, ‘What, to warn them about Luke?’ Then I add, ‘I suppose so. She needs all the support she can get. And I want her brothers to know. We should ask Tina though.’
Tom nods. ‘Tom,’ I say, ‘I’m scared for Tina.’