by Louise Beech
‘You look really n—’ began Christopher at the same time as I said, ‘Will you be—’
‘You go first,’ he insisted.
‘No, you…’
Norman joined us. Sweaty hair stuck to his neck; his eyes shone wildly. ‘Can you believe this place?’ he said. I caught Christopher’s eye and he raised an eyebrow. ‘I love it. Nice to see you, Katrina. Didn’t think you liked any of us enough to come out. What are you drinking?’
‘I want whatever he’s on,’ I whispered to Christopher as we followed Norman to the rest of the Flood Crisis party in the corner.
Christopher touched my arm, leaned close and whispered, ‘I think Norman’s on another planet, so we should maybe stick with beer.’
I said hi to Jangly Jane but she ignored me, even when fake-leather-jacket guy looked at my chest and asked for an introduction. Kath drank red wine and introduced me to Nigel, the string-vest man, and then I chatted for a while to Lindsey about a sex call she’d taken the previous day where the man asked her to pretend she was a headmistress called Myrtle.
Norman dragged me to meet Chris who was really Chris, Al who wasn’t Al, and Ed who was Ed everywhere. I couldn’t remember who was who. Names dripped like a broken tap. Holding my third gin, I called Norman Paul and Kath Nigel and laughed along to conversations I couldn’t hear. The music grew louder as my glass became emptier.
Then I saw the bushy-faced man.
He watched me from the other side of the room. Black eyes studied me from beneath his bristled brow. His name rose in my throat with the gin. But I couldn’t remember it; I just couldn’t remember.
You don’t belong here, I thought. You’re in my head.
When I looked back he’d gone.
Where had I seen him before? Before, he was the phantom when I woke. There were so many mirrors and so many people, I could barely focus. Why had he moved from my bed-end when I was half conscious into the real world – to a hospital lift, and now here, on a night out?
Christopher handed me another drink; I spilt some as I pulled away. I was confused when I couldn’t detach from him. My bracelet had caught on his cuff, the tiny fastener tangled in a loose thread. We were tied together.
‘Hold still.’ He fiddled with the clasp. ‘Guess this is the only way I can get you to stay here and talk to me, eh?’
I shrugged, nodded toward the Flood Crisis gang. ‘I don’t even know any of their names so how can I talk to them?’ He freed the bracelet and I rubbed my wrist. ‘So who are you when you’re not here?’ I asked him.
‘Not here?’ He looked around the bar, which was suddenly full of boisterous women in pink T-shirts with ‘Chantelle’s Getting Married’ across the chest. I hardly dared look, afraid I’d see the bushy man again.
‘I mean not at Flood Crisis. What do people call you?’
‘Chris.’
I wouldn’t say it.
‘And who are you, Katrina?’
I wasn’t sure how to answer, but Norman saved me when he came over, silver Bride-To-Be sash wrapped like a tie around his neck.
‘Who’s the lucky man?’ I asked.
‘A gang of hens accosted me. It’s Chantelle’s wedding tomorrow.’ He swilled beer everywhere. ‘Man, I love this song!’
Another Christmas anthem filled the air. Bride-To-Be-Chantelle pulled him onto the dance floor near the DJ’s box, stripped him of his sash and gyrated against his body while the masses cheered.
Christopher said something, but I couldn’t hear over the racket. Faces blurred. I’d had too much to drink, too fast. The chanting for Chantelle to dance sounded like ‘tiger, tiger, tiger’. I’d no idea what they really sang. Among the spectators I saw the bushy man again. All eyes were on the performance except his; and through the wiry beard and black moustache, he smiled.
‘Just going to the bar!’ yelled Christopher.
I wanted to say no, don’t leave me, but resisted, not sure why I was so afraid. When I looked back into the crowd, the bushy man had gone. Norman had fallen to his knees and Chantelle wrapped her sash about his neck, tugging on it and rubbing her backside against his rapturous face. My hands began to burn and I scratched my palm vigorously.
‘You’ll make it worse,’ said Christopher.
I pressed my palms against the cool of the glass he handed me. Chantelle had abandoned Norman for her pals, and he staggered back to us, topless now.
‘She stole my shirt,’ he slurred.
Chantelle snaked past, waving Norman’s red T-shirt like a trophy. She shouted the name of the club they were going to. It was the one I’d been to with Fern.
‘I’m going,’ said Norman, with a wild grin. ‘You should. I bet Kath will. She said she’s not had such a great night since Hector’s funeral.’
He bounced back to the others, his back scratched like Jesus heading for the crucifixion.
‘We can’t ruin Kath’s best night since Hector’s funeral.’ Christopher finished his beer. ‘And we should take photos of Norman for blackmail purposes.’
‘I don’t know.’ I thought of the night of my birthday; all the ghosts I might encounter if I returned to that club.
‘You don’t know whether you want to watch Norman strip completely?’
‘Sorry. You go, don’t let me ruin your night.’
‘It won’t be much fun without you,’ he said gently.
Once, a hundred years ago, Will had woken up and stared at me like I was the only person in the world. When I’d asked him what was wrong, whether I had some mark or other on my face, he’d said he was seeing me for the first time. He’d said his dad felt like that about his mother all the time. It was what kept them together. I’d always been scared to see someone that way. But Christopher looked different now. I’d thought it was that he’d stepped out of the crisis-line shadow, emerged into the glitzy glare of this over-lit bar. But this wasn’t new light – it was just light. This was seeing him for the first time, fully lit.
‘Not fun, with Norman?’ I asked him.
The Flood Crisis gang headed in a single chain for the doors and I grabbed Lindsey’s arm and told her I wasn’t going to the club.
‘Are you coming, Christopher?’ she asked him.
He looked at me. ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You’ll stay here on your own?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’
He left me and followed Lindsey. When he spoke into her ear and I couldn’t hear the words I felt like I had when my mother and Graham shared all the hugs and secrets. I prepared to wander around as though looking for a friend, act like I’d lost someone. Then I would go home alone. Checking in my purse for the taxi fare I fought the sudden urge to cry.
I found a fiver and looked up; Christopher was still there.
‘You really think I’d leave you on your own, Katrina?’ he said.
I smiled and couldn’t think of any name to call him.
‘Another drink?’ he asked.
‘Can we go somewhere quiet? My head’s going to explode in here.’
‘Quiet? Two-and-a-half weeks before Christmas?’
‘I can’t stay here,’ I insisted.
He nodded and we put our empty glasses on the shelf and headed for the doors. I looked back and thought I saw the bushy man. But it was just a girl with tangled, eighties hair.
Outside, wetness. Water coated cars and road surface and roofs, silvery as cake frosting. My thin jacket served no purpose other than decoration. We ran across the road. Christopher took my hand and held it close to his body. I wondered if he’d let go once we’d dodged the speeding cars, but he didn’t.
Up a cobbled backstreet we found a dingy pub that stank of poorly maintained toilets and stale beer. Elderly men gathered at the bar and older couples made use of the shadowy corners. No music and no Norman.
‘Same again?’
Christopher let go of my hand and I fiddled with my buttons. He handed me a drink and we headed for the pub’s gloomy rear, where
we found a stained but empty sofa facing another, where a couple were chatting. We sat, our knees only inches apart. This was perhaps my seventh drink. My eyelids sagged and my tongue fell asleep.
‘I’m sorry I dragged you away from the gang,’ I managed to say.
‘I’m not,’ said Christopher.
The couple opposite were both maybe fifty, and I guessed it was a second or third date. They held hands and looked at one another, the way lovers do when they are yet to see each other call the toaster a bitch for burning bread or smash glasses during a tantrum.
‘I didn’t think you’d come tonight,’ said Christopher.
‘I came because…’ I couldn’t find the answer.
‘Why?’
‘Because I had nothing better to do.’
Finishing my drink, I plonked the glass on the table between the sofas. The words in my head fell apart, as if a Scrabble board had been knocked over. I couldn’t remember if he’d said he was Chris or Christopher to people in the real world. Had I told him my real name? I was barely even sure what it was. Katrina or Catherine? Catherine-Maria? And I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined the bushy man or if he’d been real. Yet I could hear the conversation I’d had with Norman three days before – about my progress and the future of my shifts – like it was playing on a radio nearby.
‘So you’re changing your Wednesday shift.’ My voice sounded like a record on the wrong speed.
‘Am I?’ Christopher frowned; I studied the lines.
‘Norman said Wednesdays are awkward and you’d prefer not to do them.’
‘Norman said that?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I just didn’t want you to feel you had to swap.’
‘You’ll be a buddy for someone else now.’
‘I’m sure you don’t want to see my ugly face every time you come to Flood Crisis.’ He scratched his stubble.
I shrugged.
‘Glad you’re enjoying it enough to stay,’ he said.
‘Enjoying it might not be the best phrase.’ I paused. ‘Do you enjoy it? Go on, give me your usual all-knowing answer.’ I bit my tongue too late: I’d fallen into my bitch role again.
‘Like you say, enjoy is an odd word,’ he said. ‘My father killed himself when I was twelve.’ He had told me before; I’d forgotten that too and I felt terrible. ‘He was depressed. Clinically depressed, not just angsty, poor-me depressed.’ Christopher swirled his drink around the glass. ‘Probably would have been on lithium for the rest of his life. One day he took them all and some paracetamol and a litre of vodka. He swallowed the lot in a deserted warehouse near the river. A dog-walker found him, still alive, but he didn’t make it to the hospital.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be. He was a pretty lousy father: beat my mother up; sired different kids by many different women while married to her; stole from his sister.’
‘No, I’m sorry for being a bitch.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘My father died when I was eight,’ I said. ‘Not by his own hand – heart attack.’
Christopher said maybe loss at a young age made us search harder for answers. That didn’t mean we were better at finding them than the next person, but we craved them that much harder.
The speaker nearby suddenly crackled and music drifted into our space – a rock song from long ago. Christopher seemed closer to me on the sofa but I wasn’t sure if the drink had blurred my perception, made distance appear smaller. His thigh touched mine when he moved. I was acutely aware of his nearness.
Christopher looked at me with deliberation as though he was a card-player considering his next move, and I knew he would kiss me. I didn’t know if it would be in a moment or later but I knew. I smiled and he asked, ‘What?’ but I just shook my head. Then he put his hand on my cheek. I didn’t brush it away. His fingers were soft but definite. I put my hand over them, saying without words that I accepted the affection.
‘I came tonight because I hoped you’d be here,’ I said.
He leaned closer and paused to look at me. Then he pressed his slightly parted mouth to mine. For a moment, we didn’t even move. I saw the couple opposite smile and whisper before closing my eyes and savouring his warm, beery taste, his breath, his understanding, his pause.
When he opened my mouth with his, I kissed back. It seemed as if the song slowed with us, bass line intense, words unimportant. Christopher kissed me harder; I scratched his arm’s skin until he bit my lower lip with a groan. It was just us, just warmth and song.
Then an image of Robin and running rabbits and unwelcome words jumped into my head. I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut but the sinister syllables opened them again. Someone whispered ‘tiger’ in my ear. Christopher played with the strap of my top and pressed his thigh against mine.
I pulled away, shaking my head. ‘I’m not, I can’t. I just can’t.’
‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No, you did nothing.’
His hand hovered near my face as though assessing where to land and his eyes studied me, not invasive but concerned.
‘I like you too much,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘You like me too much to kiss me?’
‘Yes.’ I thought of Will, of Robin, of the bushy stranger, of all the ghosts and of words that might explode if I let Christopher touch me or whisper in my ear. ‘If we do this we’ll end up at your house, or mine, in bed probably – if not tonight, another time. And then we’ll end up shagging in a chair at the Flood Crisis place because I’m a freak and have to be tied up or have death or trauma to distract me. And then we’ll want it more, and I can only do it if you argue with me and tie my hands, and I don’t want that, and you won’t think that I’m worth being with, and I’ll have to end it and then you won’t even want to be my friend, and that’s terrible.’
He smiled. ‘I kind of like your prediction – except for the parts about ending it. We can imagine that a different way. Tell me more about this chair.’
‘I’m not being playful.’ I shook my head. ‘I can’t do this.’
‘We don’t have to do anything.’ He was serious. ‘We can just talk.’
I stood, picked up my bag and knocked my glass over. Clumsy Catherine. The couple opposite tore their eyes from one another.
‘I just can’t,’ I said.
Disorientated by the dark and the throbbing song beat, I looked for a door, any door. Everywhere I turned people grinned, eyes glowing orange, faces hairy, bristled, waving huge hands, mouthing words. I finally found the exit and burst through it. I leaned against the wall, breathing hard. A taxi pulled up to the kerb and I opened its door.
‘Katrina, wait.’ Christopher emerged from the pub. ‘Don’t run away. Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘There was a man.’ The words came out before I’d realised it.
‘A man?’
‘Yes. He used to just be there … when I woke up … Now…’
‘Now what?’ asked Christopher carefully.
‘He’s been everywhere, following me, watching me.’
‘In the pub?’
‘No, not in there, in the other one.’ I shivered. ‘I’m scared he’s just in my head – but even more scared he’s not.’
‘Katrina, I’m not leaving you like this. I’m not just after a shag. You should know me well enough by now to realise that…’
‘Are you OK?’ asked the driver. It was the one who’d dropped me off earlier. What was his name? I couldn’t recall.
‘She will be,’ said Christopher.
We got in the taxi and I moved to the other side, wrapping my flimsy jacket around me.
‘Where do you live, Katrina?’ asked Christopher.
‘I know,’ said the driver, concern apparent in his eyes. He headed for the west of the city.
‘Don’t say any words, will you?’ I asked Christopher.
‘I’ll not talk if you don’t want me to.’
‘No, I mean strange words, names.’ I’d never done LSD
but imagined this was how it must feel. In my mind colourful words danced with one another: it was a mocking performance, and the colours were bloody. Large and small letters joined hands but I would not read what they created. ‘I think I’m going mad. I’m drunk but it’s not that.’
‘It’s OK, Katrina, I don’t have to talk.’
I watched the lights fly past, my view blurred like a ruined painting. ‘I think I know the man,’ I said.
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you really see him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘No. God, no.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Please don’t ask me.’
We were at the flat. Christopher got out and paid the driver through the window. As I was about to follow him, I remembered: Bob Fracklehurst. That was the driver’s name. He’d said earlier, ‘When you give like that, you deserve whatever makes your heart whole.’
I leaned towards him between the seats and said, ‘My heart’s all smashed up.’
Bob Fracklehurst must have remembered our conversation. ‘But if it’s the kind that makes you volunteer,’ he said, ‘it’s the best kind.’
Inside, the flat was cold. I put my bag on the counter and said I’d turn the heating back on. The tap still dripped, faster than earlier. Dripdrip-drip. I removed the soaked tea towel and put another beneath the gush.
‘It’s broken,’ I told Christopher. ‘Been getting worse all week.’
He looked at it, touched the handle. ‘Maybe I could fix it for you?’
I turned the kettle on and listened to the water bubbling inside it. He looked around the flat, at the pictures, at my things, touching the photo of me with Geraldine the rabbit and saying it was cute. I looked at the shadow over my small body and couldn’t stand up anymore. Christopher put the picture back near the plant pot and came to me.
I sat on the sofa, held my face. ‘My head’s spinning.’
‘I’ll make us something,’ he said. ‘Stay there. You need a hot, sweet drink.’
I heard cups tinkling as he found them in the cupboard and thought of us at Flood Crisis. If only I could call a memory helpline and get the answers I wanted. But what would I do then? What if the knowledge was worse than the questions?