‘And then that one’s the postman and they knock-knock-knock,’ says Rosalie. ‘And then someone else goes out.’
‘How is that a game?’ says Jellifer, and the rest of them – the rest of us – split into peals of laughter.
‘Because you pay for the letter with a kiss,’ I say, bold with them now although I don’t know why. ‘That’s the rule. You have to kiss whoever comes outside to get the letter.’
‘It should be called Telegram Boy’s Knock,’ Jellifer says. ‘It’s telegrams you pay for at the door. Nobody pays the postman for letters.’
The other girls laugh so much that Morag cries rivulets of mascara down through her panda rings all the way to her chin. Then Rosalie – lying next to her, sharing a beanbag – tries to rub them off with an ice cube out of her drink and loses it down Morag’s top.
‘Maybe it’s Christmas,’ says Ramsay, ignoring them. ‘You tip the postman at Christmas.’
‘And the binman,’ says the beardy boy. ‘Hey, let’s play Binman’s Knock. It’s the same as Postman’s but dirtier.’
‘Who’s first?’ Morag says. After a long silence, Lynsey giggles.
‘Oh, go on then,’ the beardy boy says, getting to his feet and weaving unsteadily towards the door.
‘This isn’t going to work,’ Jellifer says. ‘Too many sisters and brothers. Too many cousins.’
‘Oh, no,’ says Sasha. ‘That is where you are dead wrong, Jelly. We have worked this out with graphs and charts, haven’t we, lads? This is absolutely planned down to the last drop of shared blood. Do not worry.’
When the knock comes on the door, the three girls giggle. Lynsey giggles too but a half-beat too late. She looks tired and I wonder what time it is. Light is still slicing in through the gap in the middle of the curtains but it’s orange light, no real brightness in it.
‘How do we decide who’s going?’ says Morag. ‘Not me, obviously. Buck’s my brother.’
‘Jelly-bean,’ says Sasha. Someone wolf-whistles and someone else makes a long, squeaky kiss-noise.
‘Says who?’ Jellifer’s blushing.
‘Says the birthday boy,’ Sasha tells her. ‘Go on.’ Jellifer mixes herself another drink from the bottles on the pool table on the way to the door. She holds the white bottle upside down over her glass but only a few drops come out.
‘Good grief, Morag,’ she says.
‘It’s nice,’ Morag says. ‘It tastes like peaches. I’ll taste like a peach for the postman.’
‘Good grief,’ says Jellifer again.
We wait in silence for a few minutes after she’s gone. I’m thinking about how it would feel to kiss that boy with the scrubby beard.
‘Who’s next?’ says one of the tall boys. The one with the nice skin but the long piece of hair over his face anyway. Paul, I think.
‘Naw, naw,’ says Lynsey. ‘That’s not how you play it. That boy comes back in and the girl stays outside and she knocks and then another boy goes out.’
‘That’s not how we’re doing it,’ Sasha says. ‘Paul’s next.’
‘Fine by me,’ the boy with the hair says. He wiggles his eyebrows at the dress girl as he goes out and she stands up before he’s even knocked.
‘It’s not you, Rosalie,’ Sasha says. ‘Paul’s the youngest boy so he gets the youngest girl. That’s Peachy Morag here. You still with us, Peaches?’ Sasha pokes Morag with his toe. She rolls softly away from him.
‘Who gave you a badge and a whistle?’ Rosalie says. She goes out and we can all hear them giggling as they run along the corridor.
‘’S not how you play it,’ Lynsey says.
‘Right,’ says Sasha. ‘No point me hanging round in here if no one’s going to do what they’re told anyway. I’m going outside and I’m not going to tell you if I’m a postman or a binman. You’ll have to wait and see.’
He gets to his feet and staggers about a bit before he’s balanced.
‘Have you got pins and needles?’ says Lynsey. She sounds drowsy. ‘Have you got a dead leg?’
‘I’ve got a third leg,’ says Sasha. Ramsay guffaws, then smothers it.
He raps out a shave and a haircut on the door before he’s even closed it behind him. ‘I’ve got a package for … Carmen,’ he says.
‘You don’t have to go,’ Ramsay tells me. I stare at him, trying to work out if he’s asking me to stay. But it can’t be that, because Lynsey and Morag are in here too.
‘I don’t mind going,’ I say, getting my feet under me. ‘Will you be okay, Lynsey?’ She doesn’t answer. Her eyes are closed. Maybe she’s sleeping. Morag definitely is.
I make my way to the door. I’m sure I can feel lumps of food inside me, floating on a rough sea of Pimm’s.
He’s not there. There’s no furniture in the hall and nowhere for him to be hiding. I look owlishly from one end of the corridor to the other where the stairs rise up. Maybe he wants to sit down and kiss. Or even lie down. Binmen, I think with a giggle, are dirty.
I check the room opposite, a big living room with three settees round a fireplace and an oval table in a bay window overlooking the front garden. And I look in the dining room again, where the pile of presents is still sitting on the wee table. What kind of person could get to this time on his birthday and not open his presents yet? What kind of parents are Anna and Oliver, going out before everyone’s gathered round, watched him opening his presents and sung ‘Happy Birthday’?
Suddenly I’m as tired as Lynsey and I don’t want to go back into that dark room and have them all laugh because he ran away rather than kiss me. If Lynsey wasn’t here, I would leave by the front door and start walking home.
For sure, I need the fresh air. The lumps of chunky salad have all stuck together in one big ball now, bitter with olives and salty from that black stuff, and it’s right at the top of my stomach. I swallow hard. Maybe a drink of water would help. But when I think about that kitchen and the flies on the dirty dishes, I start to sweat.
Where did my mum say the downstairs toilet was? Somewhere at the back. I bang through a half-glass door and find myself in a cramped little hallway with a narrow staircase. So many doors. One opens onto a short corridor with cupboards and drawers, then there’s a scullery with a washing-machine and an ironing board set up. I suck my breath in hard and clench my teeth. There’s nothing for it now. I’ll have to go out the back into the cobbled yard and hope there’s a hose to wash it away after. I blunder down the side of the staircase and I’ve just started scrabbling with the heavy latch when a door to the side opens and there he is. There he is. There he is, standing there staring at me.
‘How was I supposed to find you?’ I say.
He’s pale now, and the razor-burn on his jaw stands out like when Lynsey scratched her chicken pox. He looks back at me glassily.
‘I needed a slash,’ he says. ‘But you found me in the end. C’mere.’
But he doesn’t give me a chance. He comes towards me, his breath sour with the sick he’s been getting out of himself, clashing with the cologne. He pushes me against the wall, so my head whips back and makes a bumping sound.
‘No,’ I try to say, but it comes out as a burp. He steps away from me then and, grabbing me by one wrist, he swings me round like he’s doing a hammer throw and sends me spinning and lurching into the bathroom. I can hear him laughing at me as I start to retch.
I only realize I’m still wearing the party hat when it falls off my head into the toilet. I squeeze my eyes shut. I hear him laughing but I see nothing.
Even once I’ve rolled away from the toilet and I’m leaning back, I keep my eyes shut to stop the high bathroom walls from closing in around me as they spin.
When I come out at last, when I’m feeling better enough to stand up and walk, he’s waiting with two water glasses, smiling at me. I groan and take one. He laughs again, watching me realize that it’s not water.
‘No point stopping now,’ he says.
‘Right,’ I say. I want Lynsey and I want Mum. Clos
e-up, his crooked teeth with bits of white food stuck in them make me feel queasy again. It’s rotten of me to think that because I haven’t rinsed my mouth out either, but I can’t help it. I hold my breath and take a big glug of the vodka.
This time, I don’t even get the door locked and I can feel him rubbing my back and murmuring at me as I heave. ‘There, there,’ he says. ‘Better out than in.’
Then everything’s gone. Like anaesthetic at the dentist. It’s different from sleeping and coming back is different from waking.
When I do come back, drifting down out of my head into that bathroom, with the floor rock hard even under the towels I’m lying on, I shuffle until I’m propped up against the wall and I finally use a gulp of the vodka like mouthwash. But I’ve got nowhere to spit it. I don’t want to spit it into the glass or on the floor and look like a pig. Mum told me not to show her up and Sasha’s still here. He’s at the door, his body still in the bathroom with me but his head poked out into the hallway. I swallow the vodka down.
‘Of course not,’ a voice is saying. ‘She’s my cousin, Sasha!’
‘The kid’s not your cousin.’
‘The kid’s twelve!’
‘Don’t blame me. Blame Paul.’
‘Is that Sasha?’ Someone else is coming. ‘Have you been in the bog this whole time? Rosalie’s having a meltdown. We need to phone Anna and Oliver.’
‘No way, José.’ Sasha’s laughing.
‘Someone needs to take the little one home.’ That’s the first voice again. ‘She’s as pissed as a fart and she’s crying for her mum.’
‘Fuck’s sake,’ says Sasha. ‘It’s supposed to be a party.’
‘And she should be playing Pass the Parcel and blowing out candles.’
‘If you take her home now, we’ll never hear the end of it,’ Sasha says. ‘Tell her to stick her fingers down her throat and give her a pint of water. What the hell’s wrong with Rosie?’ He slams out of the bathroom, without looking back at me. Whoever he’s been speaking to leaves too, one of them out the back door and one of them up the narrow stairs. I can hear the racket of feet on the bare boards.
It seems like a minute later that I sit up slowly and look around, except that the light’s changed again and nothing’s spinning now. I feel like a bag of cement as I pull myself up and look in the mirror. The stupid dye from the crêpe paper looks like bruises all over my eyes and I can’t tell if it’s gone that way or if it started like that and I’ve looked like a clown right from the start of the party.
Lynsey.
I push my hair behind my ears, splash my face and dry it with bog roll. All the towels are on the floor, like he made me somewhere soft to lie when I was down there. I creep out into the quiet house on my tiptoes, listening for movement and looking round corners.
The pool room’s empty. Someone’s knocked over all the bottles and the booze has soaked into the felt, filling the air with a sickening stench. The big living room’s empty too. The two little rooms on either side of the front door are deserted. And there’s no one in the long dining room. I can’t face the kitchen.
Upstairs is silent but it’s a different silence. I walk to the other end of the corridor, listening, then push open a door at the far end. It’s a mum-and-dad room, stale and cluttered. The furniture is carved dark wood and the footboard of the bed is so high I have to walk right up to it before I can see over.
Buck, the boy with the beard, and the girl called Jellifer are lying there. They’re naked, with the sheets pushed to their waists. He’s got hair on his chest too and she’s got heavy breasts that have slid to each side and tremble as she snores. I’m turning to leave when I realize the boy has opened his eyes and is staring at me.
‘I’m looking for my sister,’ I say. I’m surprised by the rasp of my own voice.
The boy nods slowly. ‘She went home.’
I don’t believe him. Lynsey wouldn’t leave without me. ‘When?’ I say.
‘A bottle and a half ago,’ he says. Then he sticks out his elbow and jabs the snoring girl. ‘Jell? That’s right, isn’t it? The little one went home?’
‘Wha’?’ says the girl. Her eyes open a slit and she pulls the sheet up to cover her breasts, then turns onto her side, groaning. ‘Jesus, I feel like shit.’
‘Lynsey, the little girl? She went home, right?’
‘Yes! I told you! She was walking home, right as rain. She didn’t want anyone to go with her.’
I don’t believe this either. It’ll soon be dark and Lynsey’s scared of the dark. By the time I speak, the girl’s snoring again. I don’t think she’ll know I was ever there.
‘But was she okay?’ I say. ‘Was that you at the bathroom door saying she was crying for her mum?’
‘No,’ says the boy.
I believe that. His voice sounds different from the ones I heard while I lay on the towels and Sasha argued with them, his head round the door.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘she’ll be home by now if she went before Sleeping Beauty here came back upstairs.’ He pokes Jellifer with his elbow again, but she’s fast asleep.
I walk away.
The next bedroom’s got three single beds, jumbled and covered in clothes. It stinks of boy but it’s dead and empty.
I can hear whimpering in the next grown-up room, but it doesn’t sound like Lynsey. She’s always either shrieking with laughter or bawling with outrage. I’ve never heard her whimper. I knock softly on the door.
‘Morag?’ comes a girl’s voice.
‘It’s Carmen,’ I say, pushing the door open and entering.
‘This isn’t a good time.’ That’s definitely one of the two boys I heard speaking. He’s sitting on a low oblong kind of settee with no back, and he’s got his arm round the girl who’s not Morag. Rosalie. She’s crying hard, quiet steady tears dripping off her cheeks and hitting the skirt of her dress.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I was looking for my sister. And I heard you. Are you okay?
‘She’s gone,’ the boy says. ‘I think Ramsay took her home.’
That makes more sense. If she couldn’t find me, maybe she would get someone else to go with her.
‘Okay, thanks,’ I say. ‘This is … a lovely party but I think I’ll head off if my sister’s gone.’
Rosalie lifts her head and stares at me. Her face is swollen like a bee-sting. ‘A lovely party?’ she says.
‘I mean thank you for having me. And Lynsey too.’
They stare at me so I leave. But I don’t make it as far as the stair head. From inside the dark little room where they were playing when we arrived comes the noise of someone choking and gulping like a blocked drain. I go battering in and stop dead. It’s the Morag girl. She’s changed into her nightdress, as if the party’s definitely over. She’s lying on her back on the floor, sobbing too hard to puke and retching too much to cry. The stink of the peach stuff is enough to make my stomach roll over and rise up, but I manage to wedge my foot under her back and flip her over onto her side. I even take the time to pull her nightie down a bit to cover her up. I run out before she gets going, though, knowing I couldn’t watch it without joining in. I tell myself I’m racing to find Lynsey but really I just want to get away.
Outside in the garden, the stars are piercing the navy blue up high, but the sky’s still pink at the edges, long shoots of dusky light shining through the trees and dappling the grass, where the other one of the two tall boys is lying on his back with a cigarette in his mouth looking straight up at the sky.
‘Where’s my sister?’ I say. It’s beginning to feel like some kind of prayer that doesn’t work, like some kind of spell that I haven’t learned right.
‘Hey!’ says the boy. ‘Miranda, right? We thought you’d gone.’
‘Carmen,’ I say, and only realize he was kidding me when he laughs. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Don’t worry. She went home.’ But he points to the gate in the garden wall that leads to the beach path.
‘That’
s not the way.’
He can hear the worry in my voice and he sits up. But his face goes grey behind the mess of his skin and he lets himself drop back slowly until he’s flat again.
‘Maybe it’s a shortcut.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Scenic route? I’m sure she’s all right.’
‘Are you Ramsay?’ I say. ‘Your brother said you took her home.’
‘I was going to try,’ he tells me, ‘but I’m so wasted.’ At least he’s honest. I wish I had stayed in the pool room, like he said. In the same room as Lynsey.
‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘she’s not alone. Sasha stepped in.’
I have no idea why I start running. Only that our house is absolutely the other direction from the beach. It’s inland. There’s no reason at all for Sasha to take Lynsey towards the sea. I can’t get his words out of my head. ‘The kid’s not your cousin.’ It’s like a drumbeat inside me. ‘The kid’s not your cousin.’ And then it’s not just in my head any more. My blood’s beating to the rhythm of the words and my feet are rapping them out on the ground. I fling myself through the gate in the wall and feel the trees close over up above me.
Under here, the sinking day is gone completely and it’s far too dark to run on this steep path. So I feel my way, checking my footing before I step forward. Once I trip, but I don’t fall. I cry out though. And he hears me.
‘Who’s that?’ His voice comes from a long way down. ‘Paul, is that you, ya chicken? Is it you, Ramsay, ya big fairy? Well, you owe me one!’
I’m running now, heedless of falling. ‘One what?’ I shout. ‘Where’s Lynsey? What have you done?’
Then there’s silence. I plunge down and down, ignoring the sudden lurches as the path drops away from me. He’s hiding. At the top of the sand, at the edge of the trees, I stop and hold my breath. He’s in there somewhere, crouched in the brambles and nettles or standing behind a tree. He can’t be more than a few metres off. But as I sweep my gaze round again, looking for movement, I catch sight of something from the corner of my eye. A bump where there shouldn’t be a bump, a smudge of dark in the middle of the rippled gold tide in the bay.
Go to My Grave Page 11