by Alex Marwood
He likes to come here as dawn is breaking and the blackbirds are starting up their greeting to the day. At this time of year, daylight begins in earnest by five o’clock, when his neighbours are still safely tucked up in their beds and he can be fairly certain that he will not be overlooked. So he risks carrying a load that in normal circumstances would be foolhardy: Alice, jointed and stuffed into two tote bags, the longest pieces her femurs, the bulkiest her skull. She chinks as he walks: her bones, stripped bare, ringing out like china in the cool, damp air.
Someone will hear me, he thinks; someone has to hear me. They’ve all got their windows open in this heat, and God knows I’ve not been sleeping deeply myself. He puts the bags down to give himself two hands to lift the gate into the side-return. Raises it on its hinges to stop the scraping sound that will give his presence away, and is surprised to find that it has been freshly oiled and opens with the merest whisper. Funny, he thinks. Of all the bits of maintenance that need doing around here, you wouldn’t have thought he would have started with that. He picks up the bags again and sets off, on tiptoe, across the grass.
There’s been a heavy dew, and the lawn is wet. It soaks his shoes, weighs down the bottoms of his trousers. Beyond Vesta Collins’s little patch, the grass is long and unkempt and trips him up a couple of times with grasping tentacles. The shed, with its blank windows, overlooks his approach. He wonders occasionally what lives in there, whether even the Landlord knows. From the look of the notice, and the rust on the padlock that holds the painted steel door shut, it’s been closed for decades. There could be anything in there. Junk furniture, a workshop – dead bodies?
His sledgehammer is still there, leaning against the rear wall of the shed, its head shiny with newness. He tucks it awkwardly under his arm, and ducks through the gap in the fence then breathes deep and releases his tension. No one can see him, now. The garden fences are eight feet high, the bindweed so thick that barely a gap shows through. At one end, the blank back wall of the post office, at the other, a small office block that hasn’t been tenanted since the recession hit. For now, he is safe.
There’s a path, of sorts, worn by animals through the middle of the maze of weeds. He turns to his right and walks thirty feet up, to the bottom of the garden of number twenty-seven. The house is empty at the moment, covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting as the new owners – well, their team of Slovak builders – gut and renovate. Four months ago, the builders, like many before them, used the strip as a dump rather than pay for a skip, flinging joists and broken bricks and bits of crazy paving over the fence. It’s perfect for a demolition of his own.
He opens and upends the bags. Alice rattles out, rustles and clatters into a pile on the rubble. The Lover looks down at the bones, and marvels at the way he no longer associates these jigsaw pieces, these bleached lumps of calcium and carbon, with the girl who stirred his passion. She’s just rubbish, now, is Alice. But still identifiable, in her current state, as what once she was – once-human. Foxes and dogs and insects make short work of the soft stuff – the age-old recycling of Mother Nature – but bones are bones are bones, all the marrow boiled out of them.
The skull grins up at him, sightlessly. A few scraps of leather still cling to the cheeks, a lock or two of hair to the fontanelles. Though it’s unlikely that anyone will be along here before the brambles have piled high over the top of them, it’s best, he thinks, to make sure that, if they do, all they’ll see is chunks of something else hard among the scraps of concrete, the brown-and-orange tiles, the avocado bathroom suite.
He raises the sledgehammer above his head and brings it down.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I can fly, Cher thinks, as she turns into the alley and speeds through the night, as she hears his panting imprecations drop further into the darkness. I’m so fast, it’s like I’ve got wings on my feet. I swear, if I went any faster, I could actually take off and soar through the air like a bird.
Her foot lands on broken glass, and she yelps with pain. She staggers sideways and twists her ankle, lands heavily against the wall, cracks her head on black bricks. No, she thinks, no, no, no! She hears him turn into the alleyway, pushes herself upright and tries to hop-limp away from him. Oh, God, oh God. Why didn’t I check? I’ve got careless. I should have checked.
The glass is embedded in her sole. She tries to balance on the ball of the foot, but the ankle is weak and lets her down. She manages another four, five limping steps before he’s on her, catches her with a punch to the back of her skull. She goes face down among the weeds and the fag butts.
He’s on top of her before she hits the ground. Knees clamped either side of her hips, stale sweat rising from his leather coat. ‘Fucking little —’ he pants. ‘You fucking little…’
He punches her again and snatches his wallet back. Clamps her wrists together with his spare hand as he tucks it into his back pocket. Then he flips her over beneath him and sits on her pubic bone, grinds her buttocks into the grit. He’s huge. She’d thought it would be an advantage, that he’d be slow on his feet, but he’s clearly fit beneath his bulk, like a rugby player. Oh, God, I’m in trouble now. I’m in so much trouble.
He slaps her, open hand and open arm, once, twice across her face. Rips the wig from her head, hairclips tearing through the hair beneath, and slings it into a drain three feet away. Then he clamps her jaw between meaty fingers, squeezes her lips together like a tweety-bird and spits, full on, into her face. ‘Don’t you move. Don’t you fucking move, you little shit. Don’t fucking move or I’ll fucking do you.’
She lies still, pupils huge in the dark, and looks him in the face. A bald-man’s crop, rolls of fat on the back of his neck like a Charolais bull, thick two-inch sideburns. Flecks of spittle at the corners of the mouth. Three-day stubble that smells of fried onions and stale beer. Eyes made of pure contempt. He can do whatever he wants, she thinks. I’d better let him before he gets angry enough to kill me.
When he’s done, he gives her a couple of kicks in the stomach for good measure, throws her sideways against the wall like a piece of litter and swaggers off towards the light, buttoning his trousers. Cher curls up, pulls her knees to her chest and gingerly closes her bruised thighs. Her knees and ankle and foot throb; pulse with the beating of her heart. Her head is splitting where he punched her, her lip swelling and one eye closing. She can feel the bruises coming through on her neck; ten spreading marks of squeezing fingertips.
Cher drops her head on to her hand, and falls into the rising dark…
When she wakes, the streets are silent. No sounds from the station, no swish of distant traffic on the Embankment. But the sky is lighter, and somewhere, on a rooftop, a nightingale is greeting the dawn.
There’s been a dew as she slept, and her clothes and hair are damp. Slowly, gingerly, she unfurls herself and sits upright. It hurts. There’s not a place that doesn’t hurt – sharp pains and scarlet throbbing, and a screech of white light in her head. Dully, she pulls her foot up on to her lap, her swollen privates strangely soothed by the morning air, and examines the underside. The glass is buried deep in her heel, the thick brown glass they use for beer bottles, a shred of a Watneys label still attached. She takes a grip with trembling fingers, and pulls. Lets out a gasp of pain as it comes loose and slides out. Jesus, she thinks, examining it, it’s huge. It must have gone right through to the bone.
She wants to sleep again, but knows she mustn’t. She needs to get home, hide away, clean up, get over it. Trauma is a luxury for other people. To all intents and purposes, Cher does not exist. She knows this. It’s her choice. It’s not for ever. A time will come when she can come full out into the world, but that time’s not now. She groans as she pushes herself up the wall, limps over to her flip-flops and slips them on. The pain of standing on her bad ankle, on the ball of her foot to avoid dirtying her gaping wound any further than it’s already dirty, makes her hiss through her teeth, but she manages it, and at least now she won’t fall prey to wh
atever else is left of the beer bottle. She leans one hand on the wall and looks down at her wig. It lies, half-in, half-out of the drain, matted and ratty, the ends black with dirty water. Not worth the effort of bending to fetch it. She’s going to need all the strength she has just to get home.
It takes her twenty minutes to hobble back to her bag, holding on to walls and lamp-posts, stopping every now and then to doze on her feet, like a horse. When she gets there, she is tempted to curl up again behind the gate, where no one will find her, and sleep until the day is full. She lowers herself on to the ground and pinches herself, hard, on the inside of her elbow. You can’t sleep here, she tells herself. If he’s really hurt you, if you really need help, no one will find you. Not till you start to stink. She peels off her grimy, bloodied whore clothes and drops them on to the ground. She won’t be using them again. She doubts she’d want to, but anyway, they’re all spoiled.
She switches on her phone to check the time, and is surprised to find that it’s gone four o’clock. Her sleep didn’t feel like it lasted more than a few minutes. She finds a sachet of wet wipes and passes one over her face, is astonished by the amount of black dirt and rusty blood that comes away. Checks herself in the hand mirror and barely recognises herself. Her right eye is almost completely closed and her mouth is lopsided, her lower lip barely able to obey the request she sends it to close. A trail of dried blood leaks from her right nostril. Gingerly, she dabs at it until it’s gone. Her nose itself looks okay; but it aches inside, as though something’s bust. Christ, she thinks, I won’t get past this in a while. I’ll stand out like a sore thumb for weeks.
She pulls on her street gear, feels better for being covered. Picks the last of the hairgrips from her hair and lets it loose. Inches her hurty foot into an Ugg, sucking air sharply between her teeth as she does so, but it feels better once it’s there, the ankle supported, at least, and the cut cushioned.
At least he didn’t get my bag, she thinks, thankful for small mercies. I’ve still got my Oyster card.
Cher rolls on to her knees and gets to her feet from a downward-facing dog.
The night bus is full of drunks. Drunks and exhausted night workers slumbering in their hi-viz uniforms. Everyone is sunk into their own exhaustion, staring numbly at spots a few inches from their faces, and she’s glad of that. She takes a seat at the back, facing away from the driver, and huddles against the window. The day is already warming up, fingers of pink streaking the sky over the river. London, she thinks. You were going to be the saving of me. Do you remember? I wasn’t going to be like the other girls, in and out of foster care and slipping, with each return, further down the road to street corners and late-night beatings and a place on a methadone programme. Oh, God, this hurts. I think I’ve got some tramadol I found in a bag a few months ago. It’s probably still good. At least I’ll get some sleep. When I get back.
As they trundle along the Wandsworth Road, up Lavender Hill, she realises that she is beginning to drift off to sleep again. Maybe I’ve got a concussion, she thinks. I banged my head enough. You’re not meant to sleep if you’ve got a concussion. I must stay awake. I must make myself stay awake till I get home. Vesta will know what to do, when I get home…
She dreams about the attic again. The secret attic under the stairs. This time, it’s full of dressmakers’ mannequins and brass bedsteads, the mattresses heaped with dustsheets. Something moves, away in the far corner, beneath the eaves, out of her eyeshot. Something big and dark and old. Cher wants to run, but when she turns to get away, she finds that the stairs she came in by have disappeared…
She jumps awake. The bus is empty and the engine is off, and the driver, still locked in his cab, is flicking the lights on and off to attract her attention. Cher sits up gingerly from the bundle she’s made of herself in the corner and peers through the window. Her eye has almost closed as she slept and it takes her a moment to recognise the bus stand at the top of Garrett Lane. She’s missed her stop and ended up in Tooting. It’s an hour’s walk to Northbourne, and that’s on two good legs. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbles, though her mouth is so dry the word comes out as a croak, and stumbles off.
The newsagent is opening up at Tooting Bec, the lights coming on as she arrives at the door. She buys a pack of Nurofen and a can of Fanta, the guy behind the counter studiously avoiding her eyes, takes four pills and drains the can to wash them down. She can barely get her mouth to fit round the opening; a dribble of sugary liquid runs down her chin and on to her collar. But she doesn’t care any more. Everything hurts: her head, her neck, her stomach, her back – everything. Maybe it would have been better if he’d killed me after all, she thinks. I wouldn’t have to live through this, then. It would all be peace and quiet.
She hoists her bag on to her shoulder and sets off for Northbourne. She’s shaking and her legs are wobbly. She wonders if she should stop and get something to eat, a Mars Bar or a Snickers or something full of sugar to get her the last mile home, but she doubts she’d be able to chew it – and even if she did she doubts it would stay down.
She sits for a bit at a bus stop halfway to Northbourne, pulls the hood of her jacket over her head and greys out again. Comes to and finds herself inside a small gaggle of people in work clothes, all keeping a polite and frosty distance from the bench. I’m just another Homeless, she thinks, so much nicer when you’re talking about me on Facebook than I am in real life. One woman has perched at the far end of the bench, and keeps a tight grip on her briefcase. Cher looks at her phone. Quarter to eight. She’s lost another hour. No one meets her eye. Oh, Londoners. You’d step over a corpse in the street rather than cause a scene.
She stands up again as a bus pulls in and her fellow travellers surge silently towards it. Feels the world start to tip and steadies herself against the shelter. When she takes her hand away, she sees that she’s left a smudge of blood on the glass panel. She closes her eyes and breathes. Not so far to Northbourne Junction, now. It’s just across the Common. Then it’s just up to the High Street and home.
The Nurofen doesn’t seem to be working. Her head pounds as if there’s something in there trying to get out. Her pace slows and slows as she limps up Station Road, weaves her way unsteadily past dog walkers and joggers and working mothers wheeling wailing toddlers to the Little Sunshine nursery. She stops by a waste bin and retches. Nothing comes up, not even the Fanta, but her mouth tastes like old tin cans. She can barely see from her right eye, drops her hoodie further down to hide the Halloween mask that is her face. Someone, she thinks. One of you must wonder. Don’t you wonder? No one in Liverpool would walk past someone that looked like me and pretend they haven’t seen.
But it’s not true, though, is it? If Liverpool was so great, if the chirpy-chappie, bravely suffering people of your hometown were so great, you wouldn’t be in London. It’s England, isn’t it? It’s people. They’ll only help you if they think you matter.
The High Street is still half-closed. Only Greggs and the greasy spoon and the Londis and the greengrocer show signs of life. The new shops – the posh shops – don’t open until ten. That’s the thing, if you have money, she thinks bitterly. Ladies who lunch do lunch because they’re never up for breakfast. She feels tearful, weak, despairing. Can feel the blood seeping down her legs and chafing the skin on her thighs. She’s sweating profusely, though she feels so cold she’s shivering. She wipes the sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, stumbles blindly on and blunders into sturdy male body.
‘Sorry,’ she mutters, and tries to dodge sideways. Feels her balance go out from under her again and puts out a hand to catch the wall. ‘Sorry.’
‘Cher?’
She looks up. It’s Thomas Dunbar, Mr Chatty from the top flat: a loaf of bread, a pint of milk and a copy of the Guardian under his arm. He’s gone as white as a sheet, his mouth open, ready to catch flies, his specs glinting in the early morning sunlight.
‘Oh, dear Christ, Cher,’ he says, and catches her by the arm as she begins to wobbl
e. ‘What’s happened? What the hell’s happened to you?’
Chapter Twenty-Six
There’s a tap on the door. In the bed, Cher shifts and mutters, but doesn’t wake. Vesta puts her book down on the duvet and tiptoes across to open up.
It’s Thomas. He starts to speak and Vesta hushes him with a finger to her lips. Puts the door on the latch and steps out on to the landing, pulling it to behind her.
‘How is she?’
‘Asleep. Finally. Didn’t want to wake her.’
‘No,’ he says.
‘Couldn’t let her drop off properly. Not while we had to check her for concussion. Collette’s coming back up in a bit. She was up all night, poor girl. Didn’t get a wink.’
‘Right,’ he says.
‘So…’ she begins.
‘I understand,’ he says. ‘But I brought some stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
Thomas holds out a pink-and-white tube of cream. ‘It’s arnica. For bruises. It’s not new. I’ve used it. Sorry.’
She takes it and tries to read the back, but her specs are in the bedroom by her book, and she’s reduced to hopeless squinting. ‘It’s herbal,’ he says. ‘You just rub it in. It does help. I know you probably think it’s woo-woo, but it helps.’
‘Okay,’ she says, doubtfully, surprised that this clipped little man would be dabbling in the world of woo-woo.
‘And I got some vitamin C. It’s meant to help, too. I don’t know if it does, but it can’t do any harm, can it?’
Vesta gives him an encouraging smile. ‘I should think it’ll do her the world of good. Easier than making her eat a vegetable, anyway, eh?’