The Girlfriend

by Sarah Naughton

  She doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

  Felix puts the cue down and straightens up. “It’s getting late. We should go back.”

  The big one rounds on him. “Don’t bail on me now, you pussy.”

  “I’m ready to go too, Felix,” she says.

  “I’m ready to go too, Fewix,” the other one mimics.

  She goes to the door and stands there.

  The big one bangs the cue down on the table, making both her and Felix start. Then he grins. “You love him, don’t you, eh?”

  She hesitates. “He’s my brother.”

  “It’s more than that, though, isn’t it?”

  She stares at him. She doesn’t understand what he wants her to say. What can she say that will make him let her go?

  “We know what happened to you, and that’s really shit. Seriously.”

  She blinks at Felix. He has told?

  “But it’s not like that normally. You should try it again. You’ll like it. And I bet you’ve learned stuff, haven’t you? I bet guys would pay you for the shit you know now.”

  He’s coming toward her.

  “Felix.”

  Felix moves closer to her.

  “Go on, mate. Show her. Show her how nice it can be. For both people. For all of us.”

  Felix’s Adam’s apple bobs, then he turns to face her. His skin is waxy. “It’s all right,” he says. “You love me, don’t you?”

  She blinks and nods. She does love him. And he loves her. He would never hurt her.

  “Go on, mate,” the big one murmurs. “My cock hurts.”

  Felix pulls off his T-shirt and stands bare-chested in front of her, like one of the men from the magazines. Then he raises her hand and lays it against his chest. His skin is clammy with sweat, and she can feel his heart throbbing beneath her palm.

  “See, Felix here has never done it before. Not properly. He needs a girl with a bit of experience to show him how.”

  Felix’s eyes are closed. She wills him to open them and look at her. They can both leave. Go home. Eat bacon sandwiches in front of the TV.

  “Jesus Christ, mate, just get out of the way!” Felix stumbles aside, and it’s the other one looming over her, his alcohol breath hot on her face.

  She doesn’t say anything when he squeezes her breast, sniggering like there’s something comical about it, rubber fruit from a comedy sketch. She doesn’t ask him to stop. She knows there isn’t any point. He won’t stop, whatever she says. She has seen that look in men’s eyes before. The cold, glazed stare of a shark. He is drunk and aroused, and Felix has told him everything about her. He knows a hundred men have fucked her. He probably thinks: what’s one more?

  “Come on, Jode,” says Felix. “Don’t cry.”

  “Shut up and have another drink, you queer. It might give you some balls.”

  Felix watches from the pool table, slugging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, as his friend pushes his slimy tongue into her mouth, right to the back, as if it wants to slither down her throat. Automatically, she makes her throat go flaccid. She learned a long time ago how to deal with the gag reflex.

  Her mouth is stretched as wide as it can go without the corners of her mouth cracking. Then she feels a familiar burn in her nipple as he grips it between finger and thumb and twists.

  “Enough,” says Felix. Tossing the bottle onto the table, he staggers over, pushing his friend out of the way.

  Her heart lifts. They will go home now. Felix will never see this monster again.

  But he doesn’t take her hand. There’s a hard glitter to his eye, and as he leans into her, she can feel the lump in his trousers.

  “Way to go, Felix!” the other one crows.

  She loves him, so she kisses him back, even as tears trickle down her cheeks. The sweetness of the Coke has turned bitter on his furred tongue. She wraps her arms around him, her palms on his warm back, pressing him into her as if to protect him from what is going to happen.

  Then his body moves away from hers, and she thinks he is going to stop. She will run out of the clubhouse and along the residential streets until she finds a bus stop.

  But he’s only giving himself room to allow his fingers to slide inside the cups of her bra. They’re cold and wet from holding glasses with ice.

  She tries to push him away, but he holds her tight, his fingers digging into her clavicles. There is a grim look on his face now. His friend watches hungrily.

  She closes her eyes. The hands squirm inside her bra, and now she feels others at her back, slipping the hooks of her bra in one deft move.

  The bra loosens, and these hands, bigger and rougher than Felix’s, move to the button of her jeans. One boy is behind her and one is in front.

  Fingers worm into her underwear, then push their way inside her.

  “Shit, man, she’s loose as an old granny!”

  Felix stops then. The hands cupping her breasts go still, and his tongue freezes in her mouth.

  Then the other one is pushing him aside. “My turn!”

  Felix staggers away, dazed, his mouth glistening with spit. He stares, stupefied, as his friend propels her forward until she comes up against the pool table. The impact makes her fold at the waist, and with the hand at her back, she is forced facedown onto the table.

  Her jeans are yanked down.

  “No!” she shouts, but it becomes a grunt as air is forced from her lungs when he slams inside her.

  He is big. It hurts. That dull ache in the cervix, the tearing caused by the friction of dry skin against dry skin. He should have used lubrication. If she had known this was going to happen, she would have gotten some liquid soap from the bathroom.

  The rough baize scrapes up and down her cheek.

  Let it be over. Just let it be over.

  But he is drunk. It will take ages.

  She raises her eyes above the ledge of the table to the soft, golden light filtering through the thin curtains. Through a gap, she sees an expanse of grass and she thinks of horses running, the wind in their manes, their tails flipping.

  Then, to her surprise, he grunts and withdraws. The hand is lifted from her back, and she tries to straighten, but it comes down again with a slap. And then he is back inside her again, but now he’s only semihard. This is even worse. He’ll never come like this. He will blame her.

  It flops out. He has lost his erection.

  “Out of the way, you gay. Let the real man finish off.”

  Felix?

  She stares, green suffusing her vision.

  It was Felix?

  The thrust is so hard, her hips slam into the wooden table edge, and she cries out with pain.

  “That’s it, bitch,” the friend pants through gritted teeth. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  The big hands slide underneath her chest and start twisting her nipples. Is he one of those who gets off on inflicting pain? Will he twist until he draws blood? He’s growling like a dog.

  Hurry up and come.

  Hurry up and come.

  Hurry up and come.

  Someone is being sick. The warm splatter hits her foot. She manages to raise her head enough to turn it, her chin scraping the baize. Felix squats beside the pool table, his face ghost-gray, his eyes hollow as they stare back at her, unseeing.

  A thrust so hard, she screams: from the pain in her hips and a deeper pain inside. The sensation of something breaking open.

  They said she might be able to have children.

  Felix is sick again.

  And then the heavy body slumps over her, squeezing the air from her lungs. She can’t breathe. She will suffocate. She struggles, and he moves away, his still-hard cock twanging out of her with a wet sucking sound.

  As soon as she is able, she straightens up and stumbles around the table, mak
ing it a barrier between them as she pulls her jeans up, refastens her bra, and yanks her T-shirt down. She’s panting like a dog. She must control her breathing or she will start hyperventilating. She needs to stay in control. She needs to get out of here in case they decide to do it again, or something worse.

  Felix’s friend is at the bar drinking his JD and Coke.

  Felix is still crouched on the floor like a trapped animal. His eyes are wide with pure, cold terror.

  She runs to the fire door, and they don’t try to stop her.

  Monday, November 14

  35.

  Mags

  By some miracle, they save the baby.

  A little girl. With no name because Mira was so sure she would be a boy.

  Mira has lost several pints of blood, and for a while, it looked like she might not pull through, but she has. I sit quietly by the bed as she slumbers in the peaceful depths of the anesthetic. Somewhere in the hospital, my brother slumbers too. I will go and see him when I have the strength to get up. At the moment, all I can do is drink my warm sweet tea and stare at the light from the traffic outside strobing across the bedsheet.

  At first, I thought it was Loran—that he had kicked her or pushed her across the room, and her insistence that he had done nothing was just to protect him. Again. But the nurses said that the bleeding was caused by something called placental abruption and was due to Mira’s high blood pressure.

  The door opens quietly, and a nurse comes in carrying the baby swaddled in a white waffle blanket.

  “Would you like to hold her?” the nurse whispers. “I’m sure she’d like some human contact until Mummy’s feeling better.”

  And then, without warning, this tiny scrap of flesh and bone is placed into my arms.

  She is as light as a paper kite.

  “Are you sure?” I stammer. “What if…”

  “What if you break her?” The nurse chuckles. “You won’t. She’s a fighter, this one. You can lay her in the cot afterward.” She gestures to the plastic box by Mira’s bed.

  “What if she starts to cry?”

  “She won’t be hungry yet. You’re safe for a bit.”

  And then she’s gone, and it feels to me as if there’s only me and this tiny girl in the whole world.

  I pull back the blanket from the downy cheek. Her eyes are open a sliver, so I hold my hand up to shield them from the light above the bed. They open a little wider, then a little wider, until I’m looking into a pair of huge eyes, as dark and glistening as pools of tar.

  “Well, hello,” I murmur. “I guess this is a first for both of us.”

  She starts to wriggle and whicker like a pony. Afraid she’s about to cry, I loosen the swaddling to give her a little more freedom of movement. A tiny arm shoots out, pink and skinny, the fingers splayed. I raise my forefinger and touch it to the little palm, and the fingers close around it.

  The grasp is so tight. Never let me go.

  When she falls asleep in my arms, it feels—and though I want to, I cannot find a better phrase than one of my father’s—like a blessing.

  I raise her up until she’s resting on my chest so that I can hear the high breaths. Damp strands of black hair are plastered to her forehead, as if she has exerted herself forcing her way out into the world.

  When I feel myself slipping into drowsiness, I lay her in the cot, tucking the waffle blanket underneath her. We all sleep.

  The entrance of the nurse wakes me.

  Mira is awake now too. She lies there staring at the ceiling as the nurse quietly checks her blood pressure.

  “Can you manage a little breakfast?” the nurse asks her.

  There are slivers of morning light through the blinds. I glance at my watch: ten fifteen.

  “A cup of tea, please,” she says meekly.

  The nurse turns to me. “And one for you?”

  I thank her. My mouth is furry from yesterday’s drinking.

  The baby starts to squawk. An impressively assertive noise for such a tiny creature, and the nurse lifts her from the cot and places her in Mira’s arms. As she looks down at her daughter, tears roll down Mira’s cheeks.

  The nurse tugs back Mira’s gown and pushes the baby to her breast. The little hand appears, batting at the air, and then it settles, comfortable against her neck, and the breaths become muffled. I feel a pang of envy.

  The nurse beams. “There. You’re a natural.”

  “Did he come?” Mira asks me when the nurse has left the room.

  I shake my head and wait for her to crumple, but she doesn’t. “He wanted a boy. He will not like her.”

  “More fool him. She’s perfect. What will you do?”

  “I will take her back to Tirana. We will be feminists together, and all the men will fear us.”

  They must hear my laugh halfway down the corridor. Mira laughs too, and with her ruffled crop, her flushed cheeks, and bright eyes, I no longer see the faded, downtrodden, oppressed Muslim wife but a strong and beautiful young woman.

  Then her face becomes serious.

  “I lied to you.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you must know why. It was weakness and cowardice. I hope you can forgive it.”

  I think of Daniel. “We’re all cowards sometimes.”

  “Let me tell you the truth. And this time, I will swear it on Flori’s life.” She looks down at the baby. “That is my mother’s name.” Then she looks up at me. “Before the scream, before that terrible sound of your brother striking the concrete, before Jody crying, I heard voices.”

  I breathe slowly, in and out, trying to calm myself.

  “One of them is Jody. She sounds afraid. The other is a man’s voice. Not Abe’s. I cannot hear the words because of your brother’s music. There are bumps and rustling sounds, and I begin to think that Jody is struggling with someone. I go into the hall and pick up the baseball bat Loran keeps by the door in case of trouble.”

  I try to picture her, eight months pregnant, armed and ready to fight off Jody’s attacker. She is certainly brave.

  “There is a big bang, and Jody screams your brother’s name, and then he comes out. The music is louder now, and I cannot hear what they are saying. There is a little light from Abe’s flat, so I look out of the spyhole.”

  As she looks down at Flori’s head, I hold my breath. This is it. This is the moment I will find out the truth. The rumbling traffic outside makes the windowpane rattle, like the chatter of teeth.

  “What did you see, Mira?”

  She looks up at me. “I see Loran.”

  I blink at her, trying to make sense of her words. “This was at the time of the accident? Eight in the evening?”

  She nods miserably. “I watch them struggling, just black shapes in the dark. I see your brother bent backward over the banister—I can tell him by his build—and I hear Loran grunt as he pushes him, and then there is only one of them. There is a sound. A thud. Jody screams.”

  She squeezes her eyes shut. “Loran pushed Abe. And then he ran away.”

  She turns her head away from me. The baby stops nursing and moves its head away from her breast, gazing up at her mother with those impenetrable dark eyes.

  I take my phone out of my bag. “He can’t have. Look.”

  Logging in to my iCloud account, I bring up the fuzzy black-and-white video of the railway arches and fast-forward. Men go in and out of the metal door at high speed. The scene darkens as the clock in the corner of the screen ticks by and then brightens again as the streetlights come on. When a bald man cycles up and dismounts, I stop fast-forwarding. He is folding his bike up when the door opens and Loran steps out onto the concrete. The two men pause to talk.

  “Look at the clock.”

  I close up on it. Mira reads out the date and time and then she frowns up at me. “They must have cha
nged it.”

  “The guy gave it to me as soon as I asked for it. He had no time to doctor it.”

  Back in full-screen mode, the man on the bike walks into the gym, and Loran moves away, out of picture, in the direction of the pub. I fast-forward to eight thirty, nine, ten o’clock when Loran finally emerges from the pub. Then I stop the video.

  She raises a hand to her face, and the tube from the catheter coming out of it starts to tremble.

  “Did you see his face, Mira? Could it have been someone else?”

  “He had his back to me, but I knew him by his build.”

  “Lots of men are built like that. Why assume it was Loran?”

  “Because otherwise, Jody would have had to let him into the building, and why would she if it was a stranger? And I did not hear the buzzer, which is very loud.”

  I don’t know the answer to this. “What was he wearing?” I hazard.

  Her eyes drift away from mine. “It is true I do not recognize the writing on the back of his sweatshirt. It is something something RFC. I thought he had borrowed it.”

  We sit in silence but for the rattling of the window and small rustles from the baby. I’m not sure how to put what I’m about to say.

  “Mira, what motive did you think Loran had to hurt Abe?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I wonder if he is jealous because your brother liked me.”

  Even as she speaks, I know she doesn’t believe it. That she doesn’t expect me to believe it. I don’t think that what I am about to tell her will come as a shock.

  “Mira, Loran and my brother were in love. Loran’s gay.”

  She stares at me.

  “You understand? Gay. Homosexual. He loves other men.”

  The swaddling blanket rustles as Mira’s chest rises and falls. The baby watches her face.

  Then she nods.

  She looks down at the baby and then up at the ceiling and starts to cry, quietly first, then building and finally breaking into a sob.

  I reach forward and take her fragile hand. “I’m sorry.”

  But when she looks up at me, she’s smiling through her tears. “No, no, no. I’m happy. There is a reason why he cannot love me.”