Anything for Him

by L. K. Chapman

  ‘There may not be any need,’ I said, ‘but I’d like to, anyway.’

  He was taken aback. ‘Oh…’ he said, as it finally clicked. ‘Okay, well… yeah. I guess. That’d be… nice.’

  We arranged the time and place and there was a difficult moment when we exchanged numbers and without thinking I took out my phone, completely forgetting that he thought my phone had been stolen.

  ‘You got a new phone?’ he asked.

  We both looked down at the phone in my hand, which was quite clearly not new, and for a second I was consumed with panic until I managed to stammer out a story about a friend giving me their old phone. I was convinced for a moment that I’d blown it, but he accepted my story without question. I felt relieved, and almost proud as I hurried home to Jay, but when I got inside he didn’t seem too happy. He was waiting in the hall as I came in, with a face like a smacked bum.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked him, ‘has something happened?’

  He inclined his head towards the living room door as I put my coat and shoes away in the cupboard, and I saw the cause of his distress myself when I noticed a pair of big, lace-up black boots on the floor in the hall.

  ‘Is Leanne here?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘Oh, God,’ I said quietly.

  Jay stepped up close to me and spoke quietly, his breath on my neck making my hairs stand on end. ‘Give me some good news,’ he whispered, ‘what happened with Mark?’

  I turned and smiled at him. ‘It’s on,’ I said.

  As soon as I walked into the living room Leanne took one look at my face and let out what I can only describe as a shriek when she saw the bruising. ‘Did you do that?’ she asked Jay, ‘is that why you were so reluctant to let me in to wait for her?’

  Jay rolled his eyes and leant against the wall with his arms folded.

  ‘Answer me!’ Leanne said. She got up from where she’d been sitting on Jay’s spotless leather sofa to confront him, and it struck me how ridiculously out of place she looked in our clean, white, sterile flat. She was like a tornado of colour, purple hair flying, a richly embroidered skirt swishing around her ankles. Next to her Jay looked small, diminished, like a common garden bird next to peacock. But he certainly wasn’t intimidated by her.

  ‘What if I did?’ he said, ‘what are you going to do?’

  Leanne was so taken aback by his response that she froze for a moment, then she gave him a slap so hard it made me gasp.

  I rushed over to them, but the damage was already done. Jay fixed his eyes on Leanne. ‘You fucking bitch,’ he said.

  ‘Stop,’ I shouted, pulling them away from each other, ‘the pair of you, stop it.’

  Jay carried on glaring at Leanne, but she turned towards me. ‘What the hell are you still doing here?’ she asked, ‘why didn’t you walk out the second he did this?’

  ‘Because he didn’t do it!’ I said, ‘I was mugged, on Saturday night, after I was round at yours. They took my phone. It was nothing to do with Jay.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ she said. She gestured towards Jay, who still had a mark on his lip from his fight with Georgia’s brother. Plus, it was clear from the state of his hand that he’d hit something recently. The bandage was off now, but his hand still looked sore and scabbed from the night he punched the fence.

  I grabbed Leanne’s arm and pulled her out into the hallway. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘Jay hasn’t done anything to me. He’s had a rough few weeks and he got in a fight.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, ‘not about any of it.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I snapped, ‘but you’ve got no right to come round here and accuse Jay of something he didn’t do.’

  Leanne didn’t reply straight away. I could tell she was far from convinced. Finally, she took my arm, gently. ‘I had to come and see you,’ she said, ‘I know that something isn’t right here.’

  ‘Lee—’

  ‘No. Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I’m telling you, there is something wrong with him.’ She gestured around the square, empty hall. ‘This isn’t normal,’ she said, ‘this isn’t how normal people live.’

  ‘I like it like this,’ I said, ‘what’s wrong with being tidy?’

  ‘There’s tidy, and there’s downright weird,’ she said, ‘apart from in your room there isn’t a speck of your personality in this place. It is all him. What if you wanted to leave your shoes out? Or leave the dishes until the next morning? Does that earn you one of those?’ She pointed at my face.

  I sighed in exasperation. She was being ridiculous, but I didn’t know how to explain, and before I could, Jay came out and joined us.

  ‘I can hear what you’re saying,’ he told Leanne.

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘then you’ll know I’m not going to let you get away with this.’

  ‘What?’ he said, ‘get away with what? You think I’m abusing her, is that it?’

  He turned to me. ‘Am I abusing you Felicity? Go on, you can tell her the truth.’

  I looked from one of them to the other. ‘This is stupid,’ I said. ‘I hate this. I hate the two of you fighting over me.’

  ‘No,’ Jay said, ‘give her an answer. She wants to know, so tell her.’

  Leanne shook her head and laughed without humour. ‘I don’t need her to answer me,’ she said. ‘You think I’d believe a word that comes out of her mouth when you’re standing over her? And you really didn’t want me here when I turned up, did you Jay? Were you scared of me seeing her face, or do you just not like her having friends of her own?’

  I could see Jay was getting angry again. Wanting to avoid another scene like the one we’d had in the living room I tried to calm things down.

  ‘Lee, was there something else you wanted?’ I asked.

  She gave Jay a dirty look and then turned to me. ‘I was going to remind you to reply to Grace about her hen party,’ she said. ‘She’s emailed you a few times and you haven’t got back to her.’ She looked me up and down. ‘I can see why now,’ she said, ‘you’ve obviously had other things on your mind.’

  I raised an eyebrow. I’d seen the messages, but I hadn’t been able to face thinking about it. ‘It’s two months away yet,’ I said, ‘how much notice does she need to organise a piss-up in Coalton?’

  Jay smirked and Leanne turned away towards the door with a swish of her skirts. ‘I can’t see any point in talking to you while he’s here,’ she said. ‘You call me, okay? Any time.’

  She bent down to pull her boots on, and I noticed as she fiddled with the laces that two of the several silver bangles jangling around her wrist were ones I’d made for her. I felt a pang. She’d always been a huge supporter of my jewellery, and at any given time up to fifty percent of the generous array of metalwork adorning her body had been designed and made by me.

  ‘I’ve got to go and pick Kayleigh up,’ she said.

  ‘’Bye then,’ I said.

  She gave me a long look.

  ‘You can come with me,’ she said meaningfully.

  ‘Why on earth would I do that?’

  She studied me again and I thought she was going to speak, but then her eyes moved to something behind me – a big mirror by the door.

  ‘What’s up?’ I said.

  She walked over to the mirror, while Jay and I watched her in confusion.

  ‘Here you go, Jay,’ she said, placing her fingers on the glass and giving him a pointed look. ‘Time to learn that nothing is perfect.’

  With that, she drew her fingertips down in a swift motion, making four blurry smears on the glass. ‘Oh, and Fliss,’ she said, ‘if you want to make up stories about being mugged, don’t leave your phone in full view.’

  I followed her gaze to my handbag, which was on the floor in the hall as I’d been too distracted to put it straight into the cupboard like I usually would. The zip was undone, and right there, sat on top of all the other contents, was my phone.

  ‘You come to me if you need to, Fliss,’ she said, ‘day or night. I mean
it. You don’t have to stay here with this creep.’

  Sammie

  15

  The next day at school Sammie did end up having to deal with a fair bit of stick about flashing her bra at the bus stop, but it didn’t bother her as much as she had originally thought it might. If anything it seemed like Jay got more hassle over it than she did, and at break time she thought he might actually get in a fight with one boy, until Mark pulled Jay away and calmed him down.

  ‘Are you happy with what you’ve done?’ Mark asked Sammie later on, following her as she nipped to her locker between their Maths and English classes.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jay almost got in a fight because of you.’

  ‘He cares about me,’ Sammie said, ‘I can’t help that.’

  ‘He’ll act like he cares about you for now,’ Mark said, ‘until he’s got you into bed. That’s… that’s all he wants.’

  Sammie slammed her locker closed. ‘He’s got me into bed,’ she said, ‘I was in bed with him yesterday after school.’

  Mark looked disgusted and shocked and Sammie knew he assumed her and Jay had lost their virginity together. But the words she had used were not inaccurate and she was in no rush to enlighten him about the details of what her and Jay had actually done while they were in bed.

  ‘So… so you… you actually did—’ he stopped. ‘Jay would have told me,’ he said, and then he didn’t seem able to say anything further.

  Sammie felt triumphant for the next few hours, and it wasn’t until the last lesson that Mark spoke to her again, obviously having cleared the matter up with Jay.

  ‘He told me… what happened,’ he whispered to her at the beginning of class while everyone was settling down.

  She turned to him. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit weird to be this fascinated with mine and Jay’s love life?’ she said.

  Mark’s face turned red and his eyes glittered with anger, or perhaps it was hurt. ‘I’m not,’ he said, ‘I just think the two of you are rushing things.’

  ‘Yeah?’ she said, ‘what, compared to you, you mean?’

  Mark stopped looking at her to take a pen and pad of paper out of his bag, and he slapped them down on the desk.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve got a crush on me, Mark,’ she said, ‘but I—’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Jay did,’ she said, ‘he said you fancy me.’

  Mark looked as though he was going to argue, but apparently thought better of it.

  ‘Just because you’ve never even kissed anyone before,’ Sammie said, though she felt guilty and ashamed as the words came out of her mouth.

  ‘How do you know?’ he said, ‘you don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘so you have then, have you?’

  Mark glared at her with real hatred, and something else in his eyes that she couldn’t quite understand. Then, before either of them could say anything else the teacher told them all to quieten down and they took it to heart, keeping up a stony silence for the entire fifty minutes, until the bell rang for the end of the day.

  On the bus home, Sammie found a text from her mum that had been sent a couple of hours earlier, saying that tonight her parents would take her out for dinner to celebrate her starting her new school, and that they’d leave work in the next ten minutes or so. Sammie worked it out and realised this meant her parents would be back not long after she got home herself, so although she had been planning to spend another afternoon with Jay, she had to call it off.

  Inside the house she plonked herself down in the TV room to channel surf for a while. Jay text her and said he was thinking about what they would be doing right now, if she’d been able to come round, so on a whim she lifted her top up, took a picture of herself and sent it to him. His reply was very quick.

  Oh man i want 2 touch u so bad, i want 2 see the rest of u.

  With a quick glance around the room, even though she knew she was alone in the house, Sammie pulled her jeans down to her ankles. Then she hooked one finger into the elastic at the top of her knickers, pulling them down just enough for her pubic hair to begin to show, and took another picture of herself. She liked the effect when she looked at it, it seemed cheeky and sexy without showing him everything, and although her heart began to race and her cheeks felt hot, she quickly hit send. She smiled and threw the phone down on the sofa beside her, lying on her side in a little nest of cushions. Her parents should be getting back any time now.

  She must have ended up falling quite deeply asleep, because when her phone rang it was quite some time later, and it woke her with a start. The TV was still on so she grabbed the remote and turned it off before answering the call, which she wasn’t surprised to see was from her mum, and even less surprised to hear that the reason for the call was that the meal was off.

  ‘Something came up,’ her mum explained, ‘we still haven’t left. We’re going to grab dinner on the way home.’

  ‘Oh,’ Sammie said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sammie,’ her mum said, ‘but it’s just one of those things.’

  Sammie didn’t answer.

  ‘There’s a ham and pineapple pizza in the freezer I think,’ her mum said, ‘if you want to have that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sammie said, ‘I might do. When will you be home?’

  There was the sound of a low murmur of conversation between her mum and dad.

  ‘Not until at least ten,’ her mum said. ‘It might be after you’ve gone to bed.’

  Sammie made a noise to show she understood. Inside, she felt kind of strange. She didn’t particularly like being in the house on her own during the day, but she hated it in the evening. It sounded silly, but the big expanses of glass in the house scared her in the dark – the big, yawning blackness felt menacing to her. She usually spent evenings in her room, with her music turned up to cover the disconcerting quiet and occasional weird and creepy sounds of the countryside. Her mum ended the call without any further discussion, and Sammie thought about the fact that her parents were also pretty deluded if they thought she went to sleep not long after ten. In fact, she was usually still awake until midnight or so, and was more than aware of her parent’s hushed arguments that usually ended with her mum in tears.

  She uncurled herself from the sofa in the TV room and padded into the kitchen. She couldn’t be bothered with the pizza, and instead chose a tin of tomato soup she found at the back of the cupboard. She heated it up and ate about half, then tipped the rest down the sink and put the bowl in the dishwasher. Then she went up to her room, drew the curtains, sat on her bed and wondered what to do. She had hoped she might get another text from Jay, but he had fallen silent since she sent him the second photo, and she supposed that now he had finished thinking about what they would have done together he had probably moved on to some other thing.

  She found it strange, though. She would have thought he’d be really excited about her showing him so much of her body in a photo, and she’d half expected him to ask to see even more, though she wasn’t sure she’d have been willing to do that. Curious to check it had reached him, she opened her sent messages, and froze. She had no idea how she’d done it, and she was so horrified that she felt cold all over.

  She hadn’t sent the second picture to Jay. In her flustered excitement her finger must have slipped, and sent the message not to Jay, but to Mark.

  Felicity

  16

  ‘Stupid, interfering bitch,’ Jay said as soon as Leanne had left the flat. His eyes rested on the finger marks she’d made on the hall mirror. ‘And what the hell was all that about?’ he asked.

  ‘Jay, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘she shouldn’t have started accusing you of things. But she’s my friend, so please don’t call her a bitch.’

  ‘You’re defending her?’ Jay said, incredulous. ‘You’re defending her after the way she spoke to me?’

  I didn’t answer, and Jay brushed his fingers very gently over the bruise on my forehead.


  ‘I can’t believe she thought I’d do this to you,’ he said.

  ‘You… you did do it to me.’

  Jay gave me a funny look. ‘Yes, but not in anger.’ He put his arms around me. ‘It frightened you, didn’t it?’ he said.

  I made a noise into his t-shirt and he kissed my hair. ‘What I did to you made me feel sick,’ he said, ‘but the injuries had to be convincing. They had to look bad enough that Mark—’

  I pulled away from him a little. ‘I understand, Jay. But… you did it so… smoothly. Like you knew exactly what you were doing.’

  ‘Because I’d spent the whole drive thinking about how to do it!’ he said. ‘What are you saying? That you think I’m so used to hitting women that it’s like second nature to me?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, of course not.’

  Jay eyed me suspiciously. ‘I wish you didn’t spend so much time with Leanne,’ he said, ‘she puts ideas in your head about me.’

  For the next fifteen minutes or so Jay cleaned the marks on the mirror laboriously with soapy water. He washed the entire mirror, including the frame, then went and got a clean tea towel to dry it. As if that wasn’t enough, he then went over the whole thing again with a duster and furniture polish.

  ‘Jay, I think it’s done,’ I said, when he wouldn’t stop polishing it.

  He carried on for a couple more minutes, then he finally decided it was satisfactory and went back to the kitchen to put the cleaning things away.

  ‘You know, she might not like the way I am with you,’ Jay said, ‘but I don’t exactly think she treats you with that much respect either.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She came round here, telling you what to do, having a go at you about not replying to some stupid email about Grace’s hen party, saying I’m no good. She talks down to you.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s just her way.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it. You shouldn’t let her bully you.’

  ‘I don’t, Jay,’ I told him. ‘I don’t let anyone bully me.’