by Jade West
She fishes out a pink star. “These are really yummy.”
I take the hint. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”
“So much,” she says. “Really, really much.”
She finishes up the bowl, and spoons up every last drop of milk. Then she waits. Watches me finish my muesli with a gentle smile on her face.
We sit in silence a for moment, and there’s a feeling in me, a desperate urge to tell her she doesn’t have to go home to an empty house, where nobody really cares about her. To tell her I like her. To tell her I want to take care of her, the way I wanted to take care of Jane all those years ago.
To tell her the truth.
I tell her nothing, just put our empty bowls in the sink and gather her clothes from the laundry room. She takes them from my arms, tells me thanks, and I force out the words I need to say.
“We’d better be getting you home.”
Laine
The journey goes too quickly. The world zooms by outside the window and my heart thumps at the horror that this is it. Goodbye.
I really don’t want this to be goodbye.
My palms are hot and clammy, and my fingers are fidgety. They twiddle around and around as I try to think of a way to make this last.
I just want to see him again.
My emotions are churned into a big messy ball in my stomach. It feels weird, uncomfortable, these feelings for Nick twisting and turning, so confused. I felt so safe in Jane’s room, cocooned in this floaty bubble, like cotton candy at a spring fair. I felt so safe there, so safe in Nick’s house, that I wanted to be Jane.
And I still want to be Jane now.
But I watched him. I watched him in the shower. I watched him and I liked it. I thought about him touching me and I liked that too.
I like him.
I like him like that.
The combination feels icky. Weird.
Fluttery and weird.
I can’t straighten it out and it won’t go away, so I just keep staring out of the window and praying he’ll let me see him again.
I can’t bear the thought of never seeing him again.
He asks me for directions to Kelly Anne’s house and I want to lie, tell him she lives far away, that I can’t remember how to even get there, but I don’t. I point him onto her estate in Newhaven, and he indicates onto her street.
I direct him into her parents’ driveway and hold my breath, scared he’ll say his goodbyes and disappear now I’m back on home turf. He doesn’t.
He puts the car in neutral and says he’ll wait for me.
I smile in relief.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. “Just a minute.”
He nods, smiles, and I fumble with the door handle, trip over my nervy limbs as I bundle out of the car. I pull my cardigan around myself as I ring her doorbell, and I can smell his lavender fabric conditioner. I love the way it smells.
It’s Kelly Anne’s mum who answers the door. She takes my arm and welcomes me in, yelling to Kelly Anne upstairs to announce my arrival.
“Go on up,” she says. “She’s still in her pit.”
“Thanks, Mrs Dean,” I say.
She tuts at me. “It’s Mary,” she says. “How many times do I have to tell you it’s Mary?” Her smile is kind and laced with that little bit of pity I’ve grown used to.
I smile back at her then make my way upstairs. Kelly Anne’s bedroom door is closed tight. I don’t bother knocking, just let myself in and navigate the trail of dirty laundry until I’m at her bed.
“Kelly Anne?”
She groans, rolls over, and sleepy eyes barely focus on me.
“Kelly Anne, it’s me.”
“Laine? What are you doing here? What time is it?” She gropes for the phone on her bedside cabinet, checks the time and groans again. “Urgh, not even midday.”
“You took my keys!” I snap, and all the fear from last night comes rushing back. “My phone, too! My purse and my ID! I was stuck out all night!”
She comes to her senses, props herself up on her elbow with a confused expression on her face. “What?”
I shake my head. “Jeez, Kels. You took everything! It was all in your bag!”
She raises her eyebrows. “No,” she says. “It wasn’t. It totally wasn’t!”
I feel my jaw hit the floor, gawping as she roots around the floor for her handbag. She pulls out the contents. Lipstick and condoms and a load of crumpled receipts.
“But where…” I stammer. “What…”
“On the table!” she said. “You were in the toilet. I left your stuff right on the table for you! I even scribbled a note on a beer mat!”
“But there wasn’t…” I think back to last night. To the horror of returning to my seat to find it occupied by other people, no Kelly Anne in sight. No Kelly Anne in the whole club.
“I left it with those guys…” she continues. “The ones we downed a shot with at the bar… they were right there, at the table next to ours…”
I can’t hide the horror. “You left my stuff with a load of drunk guys and disappeared? You left my money and my keys and my phone with total strangers and bailed on me, on my own birthday?”
She covers her face with her hands. “Shit, Laine. I was wrecked. They seemed alright…”
“But they weren’t alright. Clearly they weren’t alright.”
She stares at me, and her eyes are pink and hungover. “You got home though, right? No harm done.”
“No. I didn’t!”
She sits up in bed and I’m so angry, my nails are digging into my palms, thinking about what could’ve been, all because she was too busy getting down with some random guy. “So what happened?” she says. “Where did you go?!”
I try to start from the beginning, but the words won’t come. I don’t want them to. I don’t want to tell her about Nick, or the guy in the alleyway, or being rescued. I don’t want to tell her about Jane’s room, and frosted puffs and watching him come in the shower.
It feels tickly, and raw. And private.
“So you don’t have my stuff?” I say. “Not any of it?”
She groans. “Sorry. I’m really sorry, Laine. I pulled an asshole move.”
At least she knows it.
I try not to let it upset me, just like always. Try not to take it to heart. Try not to comprehend the scale of the disaster on my hands now I’m in the cold light of day and still don’t have any of my things. But it’s hard. It’s really hard.
“I’m gonna go,” I say, and my voice is tickly.
“Go?! Go where?”
“Home…” I say. “I’ll see if I can get in… through a window…”
She throws back the covers and starts gathering clothes from the floor. “I’ll come with you.”
“No!” I say, and my tone makes her stop in her tracks. “It’s fine… you’re still hungover, and I’m…”
“You’re locked fucking out,” she says, like I don’t know that. “It’s the least I can do.”
And it is. It is the least she can do. But it’s too late for that now, and I don’t want her help, not with Nick outside.
I back away, heading for the door, tell her again that it’s fine, that I’ll cope, that she should get back to sleep.
She doesn’t need all that much convincing. No real surprise there.
“Let me know you’re alright, yeah?” she calls after me. “I’ve got so much to tell you about Harrison. That was his name, you know! Harrison! And he was so hot!”
Harrison.
That’s the guy I have to thank for nearly losing my virginity to some asshole in a back alley.
I say goodbye to Mrs Dean on the way out, and do my best not to cry before I break the news to Nick.
Chapter Five
Nick
“All set?” I ask, and then I see the defeat in Laine’s eyes.
She shakes her head, buckling herself into her seat with shaky fingers. Her voice comes out so weak, barely more than a whisper.
&n
bsp; “Kelly Anne doesn’t have my things. Not any of them. She left them, in the club.”
“In the club?” I pull out my phone. “What was the name of the place? I’ll call lost property.”
Her dainty fingers reach out and land on my wrist, so gently. “There’s no point…” she says. “She left them on the table… with some guys… when I was in the bathroom…”
My expression must speak volumes because her eyes widen as she continues. “She was drunk. She doesn’t mean it. Kelly Anne is just…”
“Kelly Anne is a selfish fool,” I say. “And you’re so much better than friends like her, Laine.”
She doesn’t look like she believes me. Her eyes are sad and glassy, her cheeks pale. I put the car in gear, reverse out onto the street. “We’ll go to yours,” I say. “See what we can do.”
“There may be a window open… upstairs… I may be able to climb through…”
There isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to be letting her shimmy up some drainpipe, but I don’t say that. Not yet.
Her estate leaves a lot to be desired. It’s tired and cramped, with overgrown gardens and battered old cars in the street. Hers is a little white mid-terrace. The garden is neat but barren. The front door has chipped red paint, and as soon as I pull the car onto her driveway it’s clear she won’t need to be looking for an open window. The front door is already open, just enough to see into the dark hallway beyond.
Laine is out of the car in a flash, but I reach her before she makes it across the garden. I grip her elbow, pull her back to my side.
“Wait,” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I intend it to. “I’ll go first.”
I take a step forward, and as I nudge the door open I hear Laine’s pained gasp behind me.
The place is a hovel. Nothing but a wasteland of empty beer cans and trash. There are fish and chips scattered all over the floor, a smear of tomato ketchup on the wall.
“Oh my God,” she cries. “What the…”
I step on through to the living room, and it’s in a worse state than the hallway. I find her keys on the cigarette-littered coffee table, and there’s her ID, too. Laine’s sweet face stares out from her college card, and there’s everything they needed right there. Her address in plain lettering.
There’s no sign of her phone or her money, of course.,
Laine busies herself around me, picking up empty bottles and cans through sniffles of pain, but it’s a thankless task. The assholes have clearly had a rare old time, no doubt thrilled at the hedonistic destruction of Laine’s home.
She wipes her sniffles on her cardigan sleeve. “You can leave, Nick. Please leave. This is disgusting. Horrible… You don’t need to be here…”
She clears another chip paper and underneath is a filthy used rubber. It’s stained the fabric sofa underneath with a grotesque white smear.
I pull out my phone and dial the police, tell Laine exactly what I’m doing, but she shakes her head.
“What can the police do? They had a key! This is all my own fault! I should never have left Kelly Anne with my stuff…”
Her self-recrimination shocks me enough to cancel the call. “This is not your fault, Laine. Some dregs of society did this, some losers with no moral fibre, who exist just to wreck everything around them. They did this. Helped by your very considerate friend.”
“But still, I should’ve known better! I should’ve known!”
“Don’t touch that,” I say as she tries to pick up the rubber in some greasy paper. “Don’t touch anything. Not a single thing, Laine.”
“But I have to…” she says. “I have to clean up!”
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t have to do a thing around this shithole.
“I mean it,” I tell her. “Don’t touch anything.”
She stops moving, gives me a little nod.
“Wait right here.”
She doesn’t follow me as I survey the rest of the house, and I’m glad, because the place is completely destroyed.
The kitchen bore the worst of it, or so it appears until I reach the landing and see Laine’s open bedroom door at the far end.
Her room is plain magnolia with some of the paint chipped away, just like the rest of the place. Her bed is an old wooden thing, just a single, and her carpet is threadbare in places. What you can see of it, anyway.
It pains me to see how they’ve rampaged through her wardrobe, pains me further to find another used rubber in her bedsheets. They’ve taken her makeup and used it to scrawl obscenities over her dressing table mirror. The rest is trampled into the carpet. I pull a sweet white dress from her wastepaper basket, and it’s been shredded, ripped almost clean in two. The rest of her clothes haven’t fared much better, and my breath catches in my throat to see her torn knickers, cast from her chest of drawers and soiled in ways I don’t even want to consider.
I hear her footsteps on the stairs, but I’m too late to stop her. She wails as she sees the carnage.
I grab for her as she launches herself towards the bed, but I’m not quick enough. She doesn’t even see the grimy rubber, she’s too focused on what’s beyond.
And then I see it, too. A tattered bear, stuffing hanging from its dismembered limbs. She wrestles with her bedcovers until she finds its head, and she really does cry then, holding its broken pieces to her chest as she rocks back and forth.
I could kill the fuckers who did this to her.
She flinches when I lay a hand on her shoulder, and her words are broken. Choked.
“It’s Ted,” she sobs. “I’ve had him since I was a baby… I love him…”
“Shh,” I say, and it’s the most natural thing in the world to pull her into my arms. “I’ll fix him, Laine.”
Her delicate arms wrap around my waist, and she buries her face against my shirt. “Why did they do this? Why did they do this to Ted?”
“Because they’re assholes who don’t have anything better to do with their poxy lives.”
Her sniffles are so sad. “I’m… I’m so glad you’re here… thank you…”
And I know this is it. I’m done for.
Her words are muffled against my chest. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell Mum… she’s going to be so mad…”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” I say. I take her cheeks and tilt her head up to mine, and her watery eyes are so beautiful. “Let’s go now.”
“Go where?”
“Home,” I say simply. “Home to mine.”
“But I can’t… I have to stay… I have to fix this…”
I brush her tears away with my thumbs.
“You don’t have to fix anything, Laine,” I tell her. “Not anymore.”
Laine
My heart hurts and I feel sick.
“You’re so kind…”
He takes Ted from my arms and finds his missing leg. My poor, poor Ted. His battered body breaks my heart. My voice is all choked up as I ask Nick the question.
“Do you think you can save him?”
“I’ll give it my very best shot,” he tells me, and I believe him. He looks around my bedroom. “There’s nothing else worth saving,” he says. “I’m sorry, Laine, we’ll have to get new.”
“But I don’t…” I cough to hide the embarrassment. “I don’t have any money… not enough… not even if I did have my purse…”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
But I am. I am worried about that. He’s done far too much already, and I tell him so. I tell him I can’t take any more from him, that he hardly even knows me, but he waves his hand, won’t hear any of it.
“I’ll call a locksmith when we’re back at home,” he says. “Some cleaners, too. They’ll salvage anything that can be saved.” He runs a hand down my chipped paintwork. “I think we’ll need a decorator, too. They’ve done a real number on the place, vile little cunts.”
I gasp. It shocks me so much to hear him swear like that.
“Sorry,” he says when h
e sees my open mouth.
But I like it. I like the way he sounds when he’s angry. He sounds so strong… so fierce…
“I just can’t believe there are people like this out there,” he snaps. “Low-life scum.”
“They didn’t do all of this…” I admit. I point at the chipped paint. “That was already there.”
“We’ll get the place spruced up,” he says. “I promise.”
I smile, say yet another thank you, and I even try to sound convincing.
It’s not that I’m not grateful, because I am. It’s not that I’m not aware how lucky I am that I ran into the road and into Nick’s path, because I’m very, very aware of that.
It’s because I know that when we leave this house, and all the tattered broken things in here, I’m never ever going to want to come back.
He digs out a box from the garage. It’s sad that one single box is going to be more than enough to contain the remnants of my life.
I’m relieved to find my college work intact above my wardrobe. I pack up my folders and text books, and place Ted on top, being careful with all his frayed pieces.
That’s just about everything I can save. Everything I want to.
Everything that matters.
Nick carries it out to the car. He loads my measly possessions into the back and smiles as I slip into the passenger seat and buckle myself in. He closes the front door and locks it, and I wait in the car as he calls at the neighbours on either side.
He says nothing about what they tell him, and I’ve never much liked the neighbours anyway, so I don’t ask.
I don’t want to know what happened here. I already know enough.
“I still think we should call the police,” he says as he reverses away from the house.
“No point,” I reply. “They won’t care anyway.”
“Of course they’ll care, Laine. They’re the police. It’s their job to care.”
“And this is a dead end street. There’s always crap going on around here. They’ll probably think it was a party I had myself while my mum was away. A party that got out of hand, and now I’m trying to cover my tracks before Mum gets back.”