The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  Looking out of the spyhole, I can almost see us, your arm around me as you let us into your flat.

  Then your door opens. For a moment—for the split second until I remember what has happened—I’m paralyzed, my breath frozen in my throat as I expect you to walk out onto the landing.

  And then you do.

  My heart stutters to a halt.

  But of course, it’s not you. It’s your sister, in a manly black suit, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. It’s a hard look, the sort that would put most men off. Her eyes are so smoky that from the shadows of my doorway, they look like deep black holes in her face. Her lips are red like a vampire’s.

  Where is she going?

  She glances over, and I’m pinned down by her dark eyes, the pupils catching a splinter of light from the main entrance far below. Then she starts descending the stairs, her heels clicking.

  Where is she going? When will she be back?

  She asks so many questions. They’re like fingers picking at the edges of my life, trying to peel away the layers to get to the tender part beneath. I daren’t go out until she comes back, in case I bump into her.

  I wait by the door and eventually fall asleep on the hall chair. I’m woken by laughter and stumbling footsteps on the stairs, and then a white glare slashes under my door as the landing light goes on.

  “Shh,” Mags whispers, giggling. “They can hear everything here.”

  “Not this, they can’t,” says a man’s voice.

  I creep to the spyhole. The man is tall and broad, his blond hair cropped tight. He’s grinning as he grabs her around the waist and jerks her into him. My body goes rigid as I wait to see if she will be able to get away. But she doesn’t try to. Instead, her arm slides down and disappears between their bodies. He gasps, then gives a breathless laugh.

  A trill of repulsion passes through me as she leans into him and their mouths press together.

  Wet snuffles and rustles echo through the stairwell. I wonder what time it is, that they can be so brazen, so unafraid that someone will come out of their flat or hear the noise and look through their spyhole. It’s long after pub closing time, so the man next door will be back soon.

  He’s kissing her so roughly that she stumbles back, coming up sharply against the banister. A hand slams down to steady herself, making the metal ring. But it doesn’t make them stop. She raises her knee high up his thigh and slides her hand under his shirt, exposing a ridge of fat above his waistband.

  One hand supporting herself, the other pulling his head down, she arches her back as he buries his face in her chest, like an animal at a feeding trough.

  And then, in a flash, it is you bent over the banister like that, gripping the arms that held you, and I open my mouth to scream at him to stop, STOP!

  But then it’s her again.

  Just when I think she’s going to overbalance and fall backward, she lunges forward to bite his neck, and they lurch away from the banister. Her legs are around his waist now, and he’s supporting her whole weight. I wait for him to slam her against the wall and force himself into her, but he doesn’t. They stay where they are in the middle of the landing, just kissing. I move closer to the door to listen for the words, words that have always sounded more like hate than love—you want it, you whore, you dirty bitch, you slut—but there aren’t any. They kiss in silence.

  My breath steams up the spyhole, and I move away to clear it, squatting in the darkness, trying to keep my breath shallow and quiet. Cold air trickles under my door. The scent of perfume mingled with that smell all men have at the end of an evening—sweat and alcohol and harsh medicinal deodorant. It makes the muscles between my legs contract. When I return to the spyhole, he has her up against your door, and his trousers are around his thighs. His naked buttocks clench as he pushes himself into her. Her black ankle boots, so small around his broad hips, twitch at every thrust, and her hands grip his back as if she is in pain.

  And then the light flicks off, and I can just hear rustling, animal grunts, and a soft knocking, as if someone is trying to get into your flat.

  It goes on and on, and then suddenly, there is a sharp intake of breath, as if he has hurt her properly. The rustling rises in pitch, the knocking gets louder, the man pants like a dog. I should go out and help her, Abe. Like I should have helped you, but I’m scared. Not as scared as I was that night, but so scared that it takes me several seconds to pluck up the courage to reach for the door latch.

  But as my fingers close around the cold brass, the rustling and grunting abruptly ceases, and there is a beat of absolute silence.

  Then Mags speaks.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” she says in a loud, clear voice that echoes through the darkness.

  _____________________

  The classroom is warm. She’s trying to concentrate on what Miss Jarvis is saying, but she keeps falling asleep, her chin slipping off her hand to jerk her awake, producing titters from her classmates.

  “So, somebody tell me one way we can use an apostrophe.”

  Zoe Hill puts up her hand. “When we shorten something, like ‘that’s’ instead of ‘that is.’ The apostrophe goes before the s.”

  She frowns, trying to understand, but her head is muzzy, and the pain in her back is distracting. She shifts in her seat, making the wood creak, and Miss Jarvis’s eyes flick toward the sound. When she realizes where it’s coming from, the teacher gives her a ghost of a smile, then looks away. Sometimes, when the teachers do this—offer her some sign of friendship or sympathy—she feels like a zoo animal, a chimp behind a glass wall. The visitors who walk by feel so sorry for her being trapped in there; they make sad faces at her and shake their heads, then they move on.

  She shifts again, and the pain in her back makes her gasp.

  Behind her, Emily Bright mimics the sound. She and Emily used to be friends, but then Emily’s mum told her they weren’t allowed to play together. Emily told everyone that she was dirty and her parents were criminals and that she and her brother did things with each other after bedtime. Emily got into serious trouble for that one, so she keeps quiet now, only tripping the little girl up when no teachers are looking, bumping her tray at lunch so her food falls on the floor, or scribbling over her best drawings, the ones she keeps in her desk to look at when she’s feeling sad. Her favorite one was of an angel sitting beside a little girl in a field of pink flowers. She’d done the sky really well, shading in the whole area above the flowers instead of just putting a blue line at the top like some of the others did. But Emily drew a big brown blob coming out of the angel’s mouth that was obviously supposed to be poo, and she drew cuts and purple bruises all over the little girl. It makes her feel sad to look at it now, sad and scared, and when the teacher isn’t watching, she will throw it away.

  For a while, Emily had boasted that her family were moving to a bigger house in a nicer town, and the little girl’s heart had swelled with hope, but Emily had stopped talking about it now.

  Even if Emily does leave, there is still Zoe and Melissa and Stevie Daniels. Stevie Daniels hit her because he said she was laughing when he was talking about his mum’s operation. She wasn’t. She was just smiling because she wanted to be friends. He got into a little bit of trouble, but not too much, because of the operation. The hit didn’t hurt, but now he jumps out at her when she’s walking past, slamming his foot down to make her jump and scowling as if he wants to murder her.

  Sometimes, she wishes he just would.

  With a sense of panic, she realizes she needs to use the bathroom. For the past few days, it has been hurting so much to pee, and she has noticed the yellow in the bowl has streaks of pink in it. Perhaps she is properly sick and will die.

  “Now,” says Miss Jarvis. “Adjectives. Who can tell me what an adjective is?”

  “A describing word,” says Jamie.

  “Correct. Now, I’m going
to go around the class, and we’re going to come up with some words to describe a person. Jamie, you begin.”

  “Strong,” says Jamie.

  “Good. Imran?”

  “Clever.”

  The list went on: tall, hairy, blond, nice (disallowed), friendly, naughty, noisy, brave.

  It came to the little girl’s turn. “Beautiful,” she said. “Kind.”

  “You’re supposed to say one, dummy,” hisses Stevie beside her.

  “Good,” says Miss Jarvis. “Stevie?”

  “Stupid.”

  “Ugly,” says Emily, and she can feel her former friend’s eyes boring into her back.

  “Smelly,” Melissa says, and the whole class laughs.

  Then Jason Hicks cries out, “The police are here!” and everyone rushes to the window.

  “I didn’t know we were having a visit today,” Miss Jarvis says, joining them. “Perhaps it’s an internet safety thing for fifth grade.”

  Both police officers are women. One is young and pretty, the other, older and gray-haired; neither is smiling at the faces pressed to the windows. They cross the playground with silent purposefulness and disappear through the door that leads to the headmistress’s office.

  “Has Mrs. Harrison committed a crime, Miss Jarvis?” says Zoe.

  “Is it because her car’s too dirty to read the license plate?”

  “Has she been murdering children?”

  Laughter.

  “Quiet!” Miss Jarvis snaps. Her face has gone white. She, like the children, is watching the police officers come back out the door, accompanied by a grim-faced Mrs. Harrison. The head teacher glances up in the direction of Mrs. Jarvis’s classroom, and for a moment, a look passes between them.

  “Back to your desks,” Mrs. Jarvis says quietly, and the children, subdued, do as they are told.

  The little girl can barely put one foot in front of the other, she is so scared.

  They know what she did last night.

  And so many nights before that.

  She knows it’s illegal. Her parents told her. They said if anyone ever found out the things she had done, she would go to prison, forever. She would be in prison with the same men she did the illegal things with, but her parents wouldn’t be there to stop them if they tried to really hurt her. They could do anything they wanted to her.

  And now the police are here. They will take her to prison, and the men will be waiting for her.

  Footsteps thud down the corridor. There are no voices. The children around her look at one another. Excitement has turned to trepidation. Is one of them in trouble? Has something bad happened to someone they love?

  The footsteps draw closer.

  She leaps up, making the desk legs screech, and flies for the door.

  “Where are you going?” exclaims Miss Jarvis, but she is already running down the corridor, in the opposite direction from the three adults who have stopped in surprise.

  She bursts through the emergency exit, and the alarm starts up, an ear-splitting ringing that makes her teeth vibrate. There are shouts behind her, running footsteps.

  She runs through the playground, dimly aware of faces pressed to windows and hands banging on glass. As she skids around the corner of the building, the main gates come into view.

  She is just tall enough to hit the green button that releases them.

  Someone is calling her name, but she doesn’t turn, just squeezes through the widening gap with a moan of pain as the metal bars cause pressure on her bladder and scrape the welts on her back.

  The belt buckle was square and brass. When she saw him taking it off, her heart had sunk, but it lifted again when he didn’t undo his trousers. She hadn’t understood, because she had never met him before. She didn’t know it was her pain that gave him his pleasure. He wanted to see her cry and beg him to stop. Her dad stopped it in the end, saying he would break her and then where would he get his fun next time? Heh heh.

  She is out of the gates and running down the sidewalk in the direction of the park. If she can get there, she will be able to hide in the bushes. Unless they send dogs out for her. Or heat-seeking helicopters like she’s seen on the TV.

  If she jumps into the lake, perhaps they will not be able to see her or smell her. But then she might drown.

  Footsteps behind her.

  She manages to speed up a little. She has the body of an athlete, the PE teacher always says. He can’t understand why she is so slow, why she tires so easily. He says she is unfit, eating the wrong things, staying up too late.

  She risks a glance behind, and her bladder loosens with a vicious burning sensation. It is the policewomen who are pursuing her—and they are fast. The older one, surprisingly, is in the lead, her cap wedged on her head, her arms and legs pumping.

  The little girl whimpers and tries to increase her pace as she runs past the row of houses. But she is so tired, and her back hurts, and her bladder hurts, and there is no strength left in her legs. She is not strong or clever or brave. She is just tired. She just wants it all to stop.

  There is a truck coming. She feels its rumble through her feet before she hears its roar behind her, drowning out the sounds of her pursuit. Suddenly, she knows what she must do.

  The truck is at her back, so huge and loud, shaking the trees and rattling the windows of the houses.

  It won’t hurt at all; it will be so quick.

  She stops and turns. The robot face of the cab stares at her impassively, the driver no more than a shadow behind glass that reflects the trees of the park. They would have found her in the park. They would find her anywhere. Find her and take her back to the men, and it would be so much worse than before, though she cannot imagine how.

  She bends her knees, ready to leap.

  The truck is so close, she can smell its dirty, gusty breath.

  It is a meter away, half a meter; she launches herself upward, into the air, closing her eyes, waiting for the huge, shocking impact.

  Her feet leave the edge of the sidewalk. The truck screams; the whole world shakes.

  But just in time, she is being yanked back. There is an impact, a painful one, as she lands on her back on the sidewalk, but the truck thunders past, and she screams in an agony of despair.

  The gray-haired policewoman is kneeling beside her, holding her down as she tries to scramble up and throw herself into the path of the next vehicle, or the next, or the next.

  Eventually, she gives up, collapses on her torn back on the sidewalk, and sobs.

  Running footsteps skid to a halt, and the other policewoman is beside her, but they make no attempt to drag her to her feet or handcuff her. Instead, they lift her gently and, like doting parents with a new baby, gather her into their arms, not caring that bloody, acidic pee is soaking through her threadbare school skirt.

  They rock her like that until she starts to calm down and can make sense of the words they are repeating over and over, their voices merging together, as if they are singing a round.

  “You’re all right now. You’re all right. Nothing bad is going to happen to you again. Not ever. I promise. I promise.”

  The little girl raises her head and looks from face to face. She is surprised to see that both women are crying.

  Saturday, November 12

  20.

  Mags

  Spending the night with Daniel makes me feel so much better.

  Though in fact, as the morning progresses and I’m still floating on a bubble, I wonder if it isn’t the sex—which was fairly clumsy and unrewarding due to the fact that we were both drunk—and rather simply waking up with a nice warm human being beside me. I didn’t realize how much being alone in this dark flat, in this shitty neighborhood, in this freezing city, was getting to me. Plus, there’s no denying I felt safer with a big strong man in the house.

  To ma
ke up for the last morning we spent together, where I basically told him to fuck off, I leave him sleeping and head out to get breakfast from the local bakery.

  I won’t go to the hospital today in case I bump into Jody. I still haven’t had a chance to gather my thoughts about the stuff I saw on Abe’s computer last night. It wasn’t just photographs. I opened his history and logged onto a chat room he seemed to have spent a lot of time on. There was a thread from this Redhorse. Predictable enough stuff initially: Can’t stop thinking about the taste of your cock, I want to feel you inside me, that sort of thing. Porn talk. But the later ones are more intimate. From Abe: I’ve been thinking about you all day. From Redhorse: Not long before I see you. Abe: I’m counting the seconds. x

  My first thought was: Did Jody find out he was screwing around on her? He’d set the computer to remember all his passwords, so it wouldn’t have been hard for her. But that brings me back to the idea that she pushed him, and I just don’t buy it. Say she confronted him about it and there was a struggle. She isn’t physically strong enough to overpower him. Plus, would you really confront a cheater on your way home from a night out? Wouldn’t you do it in the privacy of your flat?

  On my return from the bakery with my bag of croissants, Jody is coming out of St. Jerome’s. When she sees me, she stops dead on the path. I’m wearing Abe’s parka—it’s far warmer than the rain jacket—and maybe I look a bit intimidating. I pull the hood down and force myself to smile.

  “Where are you off to?”

  She blinks rapidly, then finds her voice. “The hospital.”

  “Oh.” My smile falters. Guiltily, I screw the croissant bag up until it’s as unobtrusive as possible. While you’re enjoying a nice slow morning screw, she’ll be conducting her bedside vigil for your brother. I’m the bad guy yet again.