by Debi Alper
‘Oh.’ He looked downcast. ‘W-when did you last see her?’ He didn’t really want to know. I could tell. But he didn’t want to say anything else either. He was avoiding something.
‘It’s been a while, I suppose. Why? Has something happened?’
He shuffled his feet. His eyes watched them do their thing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m afraid Della’s…she’s in hospital.’
My heart did one of those horrible skip-a-beat things.
‘What happened?’ I croaked.
The guy looked miserable. ‘I don’t really know. The police came. A couple of weeks ago. They asked me questions. You know, like when had I last seen her and did I know any of her friends and stuff. I couldn’t really help much. I – erm – keep myself to myself, you know?’ He looked over his shoulder, as if he wanted to run back inside and bolt the door against all the unpleasant messiness of life. I knew how he felt, but I couldn’t let him go just yet.
‘They told you she was in hospital? They must have given you some idea of what happened,’ I persisted.
‘They said…’ He stuttered and stopped. ‘They said…they said she’d been beaten up.’
The words came out in a rush, far louder than he’d intended. He seemed almost as freaked to hear them as I was.
My stomach did an aerobic duet with my heart, sending a little jet of bile shooting up my gullet. I swallowed hard and reached for the wall for support.
‘Are you OK?’ He looked concerned. ‘I’m sorry. It must be a terrible shock.’
I pulled myself upright with an effort.
‘No. I mean, yeah. I’m fine. Do you know which hospital she’s in?’
‘St Thomas’s,’ he said. ‘I – I wanted to send a card. But I didn’t know what to say.’ He looked like he was going to cry.
I turned to go.
‘It’s dreadful, isn’t it?’ I wished he’d just shut up now. Having given utterance to those stomach-churning words, it was as though he’d let the cork out of the bottle. I didn’t need to hear it. But there was no stopping him now. ‘You’re simply not safe on the streets any more. I hardly go out these days. Mind you, I suppose someone like Della makes such an obvious target.’
Did I imagine those inverted commas round Della’s name? I paused in the doorway.
‘What do you mean, “someone like Della”?’ I breathed without turning round.
‘Well, you know. There are some sad and sick people in the world…’
I spun round, my fists balled at my sides. I must have looked as savage as I felt, because the guy took a step back, his hands held out in front of him, palms out.
‘No! No! No!’ he blurted. ‘There are some sad and sick people in this world who can’t handle someone like Della.’
I glared at him for a moment, then slowly relaxed. My fingers unpeeled, leaving deep pits in my palms. We both took a deep breath.
He looked me straight in the eyes for the first time. ‘I’m gay,’ he said with a tiny shrug.
I suddenly felt tired. More tired than I could ever remember feeling.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘It’s just…it’s OK. Thanks for your help.’ I turned to go again.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘You look really pale. Do you want to come in and have some camomile tea?’
I gave a wry smile and shook my head. This guy was sounding more and more like a Nirvana tenant every minute. Camomile tea and sympathy. I could get that at home.
My legs were too shaky to cycle. I pushed the bike for a mile or so before I got bored and cautiously wobbled my way home through the back streets of Brixton and Camberwell.
I wasn’t going to tell anyone about Della. Least of all Stan. Mags might have tried to persuade me that this too was a coincidence, and I didn’t think I could handle that. I reckon Ali might have suspected I had something major on my mind.
As I came up my stairs, I heard the bathwater running and prayed it was for Stan. That prayer at least was answered when I went into my front room and found Ali sprawled on my cushions, reading back issues of Skin Two. For a moment I lurched, thinking he’d been through my stuff. But then I realised they were more likely to be Stan’s. Ali was shaking his head in disbelief. I looked down at the page he was reading and recognised the article. It was about a woman who was turned on by having an open switchblade inserted inside her. There was a large-print warning that some readers might find the content shocking. Such warnings are rare in a publication like Skin Two.
Ali looked at me, his dark eyes huge in his pretty-boy face. Ali might have an anarchist symbol tattooed on his forehead, but a little piece of him will always be the shy, well-behaved child of strictly Muslim parents. He was shocked. He should have heeded the warning.
The effect on me was altogether different. All the combined emotions of the past few days – the fear, the shock, the pain, the loss – gathered together into a knotted fist in my pelvis, then crashed downwards and exploded between my legs. I pushed Ali back on to the cushions, leapt on top of him and began ripping his clothes off.
I don’t know if he enjoyed it. If I’m absolutely honest, at that point I didn’t care. I know he came, but I have to confess it wouldn’t have mattered to me one way or the other. It was my hunger that needed appeasing. My turmoil that needed expressing.
When it was over, I rolled off him. He lay back, breathing heavily through his mouth, staring at the ceiling. I felt a little guilty, but not too much. We heard the water gurgling out of the bath, followed by footsteps padding down the hall. Ali reached out a limp hand and pulled the nearest thing over his crotch. As it happened, it was the copy of Skin Two, but I don’t suppose he noticed.
The door opened and Stan wafted in on a cloud of expensive aftershave. He was wrapped in an outrageously fluffy white towelling robe. He stopped dead when he saw us. I rose to my feet, stark naked, and smiled sweetly.
‘Hi, Stan,’ I sang as I sashayed past him and down the hall into the steamy bathroom.
The great thing about an Ascot water heater is that you have limitless hot water. As much as you want, when you want and only when you want. How can time switches, boilers, immersion heaters and the like be an improvement on that? I ran a deep bath. Stan had left his aromatherapy oils on the tiny shelf. I chucked in a cocktail of lavender, geranium, clary sage, tea tree and patchouli. You’re probably not supposed to mix them, but what the hell? If I was going to die in the next few days, it wasn’t going to be from an overdose of aromatherapy.
As it goes, the effect was not calming. No sooner had I lain back in the scented soup than I shot upright again. Shit! We’d only forgotten to use a fucking condom. Though to be fair, I hadn’t given Ali much of a chance to start rummaging in pockets. Shit! Shit! Shit! I flopped back in the water again and banged my head on the edge of the bath, adding a nasty headache to my list of woes. I did some quick mental arithmetic. Shit again! Day fourteen. The day most likely to… I douched myself out as best as I could. Then I stood up in the bath and jumped up and down. What the fuck was I doing? I might as well have gone the whole hog and drunk a bottle of gin and thrown myself down the stairs.
As luck would have it, Ali walked into the bathroom just as I was mid-jump. He looked at me a little strangely – as though he was trying to assimilate new information and make sense of it.
‘Um – all right if I go now?’ he said.
I stopped jumping. ‘Yeah. Sure.’
He hesitated a moment, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘Oh, sure,’ he replied in a dull tone. ‘Are you?’
I plopped back down into the bath and stared at the lime-encrusted taps.
‘Me? Oh, I’m fine,’ I whispered.
17
THE MORNING-AFTER pill is a hormonal sledgehammer that crashes a wreaking path through your pelvic organs, creating oestrogen anarchy. The Asian chemist on the Walworth Road who had given it to me over the counter had been smug and censorious. He had played down the
side-effects, but what did he know? He’d never have to subject his hormones to an equivalent battering. I filled in the requisite forms, automatically lying in response to every question on the general principle that you never tell the truth on an official form if you can avoid it. I spent the next day fighting nausea, cramps and an awesome foul mood.
I could tell Stan was getting twitchy and bored. He tried to interest me in cyber-sex on his laptop, but slunk off when I expressed total disinterest. He probably figured I had no need of virtual sex anyway, after what he’d seen the evening before.
For most of the day, he had the good sense to stay out of my way. But then he had to go and blow it. It was late afternoon and I was lying on my cushions with a hot water bottle and a trashy book. Stan flounced in and threw his designer-duds self into my only armchair. The springs creaked in protest. He sat for a while, huffing and fidgeting. I didn’t look up from my book. He cleared his throat a few times, drummed his fingers on the worn armrests and crossed and recrossed his legs. I still didn’t look up. He jumped up, walked over to the window, opened it, looked out, crashed it shut again and chucked himself back into the armchair. By this time, I was reading the same line over and over, but I was damned if I’d give him the satisfaction of getting my attention.
He realised he had to resort to more obvious means. He cleared his throat again.
‘I’m going out tonight.’
I still didn’t look up. ‘No you’re not,’ I replied in an even tone.
‘Oh yes I bloody well am! You can’t keep me here, you know! You can’t stop me from getting up and going anywhere I damn well want!’
Ah. The petulant schoolboy routine. Well, I knew how to deal with that.
‘OK. Off you go then.’ I carried on reading.
You know that Harry Enfield sketch, in which he plays Kevin, the ghastly floppy-haired teenager?’ Well, here was Stanley Highshore, executive producer, media celebrity, highly respected mover and shaker, husband to a Tory MP, doing a more than passable impersonation of a middle-aged Kev.
He leapt out of the chair and stamped his foot. I swear I’m not lying about that. He really did.
‘I can’t though, can I? You know I can’t. It’s not fair, you know. It’s really not fair.’ And then, introducing a little bit of grown-up speak, ‘The situation is quite intolerable. It is unacceptable.’
I was so taken with this performance that I put the book down, having carefully marked my place with a torn-off piece of a Rizla packet. On another day, one on which I wasn’t burning up in Hormone Hell, I might have had a different reaction. I might have suggested he sit down so we could discuss things calmly. Maybe I’d have made him some tea. Sympathised a bit. Talked through options. But not today. You have to say this about Stan: either he has a lousy sense of timing, or his survival instincts were fucked. Maybe he’d played the part of the gimp in one too many sadomasochistic rituals and no longer knew when to back off
I swivelled to face him, grimacing at a hot stab of cramp in my belly.
‘So what the fuck are you really saying, Stan?’
I kept my voice even, but people who know me well know that’s when I’m at my most dangerous. Stan didn’t know me well.
‘What I’m really saying, Jenny, is that I’m paying you a very substantial sum of money so that I can get into a position where I am not afraid to set foot outside the door.’
‘And?’
‘And, as far as I can see, the only thing you’ve been successful in so far is spending that money. I see no results. I see no action. I see an escalation in the violence. And I see you – and I’m sorry, Jenny, but this needs to be said – I see you lying on the cushions reading a book.’
I was on my feet faster than if I’d been sprung from a slingshot, cramps or no cramps.
‘Get out!’ I shrieked. ‘Get the fuck out of my home! Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare, come into my home and try to tell me how to spend a single fucking minute of my time! You think your money buys you that right? Do you? You arrogant, pigshit, arsehole fucker! You slimy dog-breath stapled scumbag!’
Stan was backing out of the room and up the hall, pushed by the sheer force of my invective.
‘You ungrateful, snivelling, insensitive piece of shite! I‘ve been fucking attacked. My windows have been smashed. My friends have been terrorised. And all for you. You! And now you have the balls, the utter bare-faced, bare-arsed balls, to tell me I’m not doing anything for you. To tell me – ME! – that I shouldn’t be lying down and reading a fucking book. Who are you, eh? Who the fuck are you? I’ll tell you who you’re fucking not. You’re not my teacher. You’re not my boss. AND YOU’RE NOT MY FUCKING FATHER!!!’
By now, Stan had backed into the kitchen. He was white-faced and sweaty. Cause and fucking effect, Stan. You caused it. Now you can stand there and feel the effect. He was in the corner, with nowhere else to go.
I grabbed something from the kitchen counter and waved it in his face. As it wafted across my vision, I realised it was a teaspoon. Unless I was going to use it to gouge bits out of him, it wasn’t going to do me much good. I flung it down and it tinkled on the bare floorboards. The sound was good, but not enough. I followed it with a saucepan, a frying pan, a wok and the contents of my cutlery drawer. Nothing breakable, you notice. Even when I’m in a rage, I never lose it 100 per cent. There’s always a tiny piece of me that can visualise sweeping up glass and crockery, missing bits and stepping on them in my bare feet, and not having a cup or a bowl when I need one.
The downstairs door to my flat crashed open and feet thundered up the stairs, adding to the cacophony.
‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Mags roared. ‘Jenny? Are you OK? Fucking hell. It’s like living on the set of Big Brother.’
I froze with my arms in the air holding a roasting tin aloft. I took a deep breath. Stan was crouched in the corner with his hands wrapped over the top of his head.
‘Stan wants to go out,’ I said. ‘And he thinks we’re not doing enough to justify what he’s paying us.’
Mags’s lips curled in a malevolent smile. Her eyes glistened as she looked at Stan with an almost maternal air.
‘Well, you’re free to go, Stan,’ she said, her voice deceptively sweet. ‘Leave whenever you like. But I’ll tell you this. And you’d better listen and listen very carefully indeed. If you stay here, there’s something you have to understand. Jenny here has opened her home to you, allowed you to take over her life – endangering her own and those of her friends – and has shown you every hospitality. Now, in the circles you move in, maybe that comes cheap. I don’t know. But I doubt it very much. But in the circles we move in, that demands more than just money. It demands…’ Mags paused for effect. I love to see Mags in full flow. She does that intimidate-the-white-man bit so very well. ‘It demands RESPECT. Do I make myself clear…’ Mags rose up on her toes and stretched to her full majestic height so that she loomed over Stan like a tower block over a dolls’ house. ‘BWOY!’
To his credit, Stan remained conscious. His nostrils flared and he swallowed hard as he nodded timid acquiescence. I don’t know if it was fear of the wolves outside or the lionesses inside, but he had the air of a sacrificial lamb granted a temporary stay of execution.
‘Now,’ said Mags, her voice reverting back to its former scary sweetness. ‘Do you have anything to say to Jenny?’
Stan unfolded himself from the corner in which he’d been crouching.
‘Sorry, Jenny,’ he mumbled. He looked at Mags, who raised an eyebrow indicating that more was required. ‘Um. I was out of order. I had no right to say what I did. It was crass and insensitive.’ Mags nodded encouragement. ‘I – I know you’ve put yourself out no end on my account. And – and I’m very grateful. Thanks. And – um – sorry. Again. And – ’ another swift glance at Mags the Mountain – ’and – uh – I’d like to stay. If that’s all right with you…’
I lowered my arms and put the roasting tin down on top of the cooker. I gave
a regal nod and turned on my heel. Mags went back downstairs and I returned to my cushions and my book. In the kitchen, I could hear the sounds of Stan clearing up.
18
THE NEXT DAY, hormones still a-hopping, I jumped on a number 12 and headed for St Thomas’s. Although my reaction to Stan’s attempted power trip had been entirely justified, his words had nevertheless stung me. There was no way I was going to spend another day mooning round in Oestrogenville.
At the hospital I gave Della’s name to the grey-haired woman sitting at the reception desk. She checked her screen and told me Della was no longer in Intensive Care. She directed me to a fifth-floor ward accessible by negotiating a maze of corridors, several banks of lifts and at least two faces of the Eiger.
First, I bought an armful of the most exotic flowers available at the flashy florist’s. The ground floor of St Thomas’s is very weird. If it wasn’t for the preponderance of tired-looking people in white coats and sick-looking people in jim-jams, you could be in any faceless shopping mall in any faceless suburb. Newsagents, cafés, gift shops, banks… Strange to think of the number of births, deaths and in-between pains filling the rest of the building.
I spent the next forty minutes lost in the labyrinth. By the time I arrived at Della’s ward, I was in competition with the flowers to see which of us could wilt the fastest.
A young nurse with dark smudges under her eyes directed me down yet another corridor to Della’s room.
‘I don’t know if they’ll let you see her, though,’ she warned.
A bored-looking cop sat on an upright wooden chair outside Della’s room, pensively picking his nose.
‘Can I go in?’ I asked.
He looked me up and down. ‘And you are…?’
‘I’m a friend of Della’s.’
He checked his watch and jotted down the time in a spiral-bound notebook.
‘Name?’ he demanded.
I froze. I hate hospitals. And I hate cops even more. This was a hideous combination. I swallowed hard.
‘Jennifer Stern,’ I replied. He noted it in the pad.