by Ali Ahearn
Frankie was all business. ‘We need to –’
‘No, Frankie,’ Joni interrupted firmly. ‘I know what needs to be done. You don’t know how to –’
Frankie rolled her eyes at her sister. ‘Look, Joni, you’d be surprised what I know about –’
Something about her sister’s tone, her casual assumption that she could fix everything in the world, even this, enraged Joni. She felt seven years of melancholy and loneliness rise up in her. She wanted to stick the knife and twist it until Frankie really did know about pain and injury.
‘No, Little Miss Perfect. What would you know about addiction, in your pretty world with your bloody pearls and your fucking marmalade? You and that cheating gobshite? Sit down and take a number for a minute, would you?’
Joni started over to Colm and Daragh and Frankie caught her arm.
‘For your information, you little cow,’ Frankie snarled. ‘For the last five years, I have been the sole executive of Pick Me Up and this is exactly what we do. So, I do know something about addiction.’
‘You …?’ Joni’s eyes were wide and wild in her head. She’d heard of them. Who, in her situation, hadn’t?
But nothing made sense. Frankie? She was an economist.
‘Why, Frankie?’
‘Because of you.’
Frankie turned on her heel to go to Daragh and, before Joni could say, Come back here and tell me more, the moment was gone.
‘What the feck will we do?’
Colm, so composed while admitting his treachery with the compass, was suddenly a nervous wreck. ‘Joni, Frankie – what will we do? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we’re lost.’
Joni had no idea. And neither did Frankie. Colm knew it. Daragh, growing more silent, sweaty and terrified with each passing moment, knew it. Even Des, cowering unhelpfully inside her clothes, knew it. And Joni certainly knew it. But, knowing you were well and truly shagged and admitting it were two entirely different things. Joni knew all about denial and felt obliged to put her skills to the test to get them out of their current funk. Denial was dead easy, once you knew how. A simple three-step program.
And if there was one thing Joni knew, it was programs with steps.
First step, fury. ‘Listen, Danny Boy. You little fucker. You have no right to fall apart right now. You are the one who screwed this up royally. Crapping on about the New Romantics and leading us up Mount fucking Everest while you had no clue in hell where we were or how the bloody hell we could find out.’
Colm looked suitably contrite. Good.
Step two, feign calm. Just channel Frankie. She took a deep breath and pinned Colm down with the force of her grey eyes.
‘Everything is going to be fine. Just keep taping.’
Colm picked up the camera Frankie had tossed away.
‘If we don’t use the video diary, we’ll be disqualified, remember?’
‘She’s right, Colm. Do what she says. And any more crap from you and I’ll make what I did to that bush,’ Frankie gestured dramatically at the beheaded shrubbery beside her, ‘look like nothing compared with what I’ll do to you.’
Colm swallowed and nodded as Daragh moaned.
Joni nodded too. Onwards and upwards. Step three. Pretend to have a plan.
‘We’ll keep filming like we know exactly where we’re going. Until we do.’ Joni crossed her fingers behind her back like a six-year-old. ‘In the meantime,’ she gestured to the shaking Daragh, ‘we need to take care of our man over there. How bad is he?’
‘Ahhhh …’ Colm looked like he didn’t want to admit to anything, and Joni thought in a single, whizzing instant about all the people she had made tell lies for her over the four years she had gone AWOL. Amazing what people will do. Lie for you, even to you; even help you as you convince yourself you’re not really so screwed up. Even when you’re a toxic, lying shite.
Everyone except G.
A memory. Six years ago.
A year after The Incident, a year after things had really started to go wrong.
But, out of habit, Joni had managed to limp over to G’s. For Big Brother. The best series yet. A one-legged cross-dresser had been smuggled into the house and caused an uproar by snogging the Hunk and calling the Princess a cow. And then mooing at her.
But this night, even Big Brother could not distract G.
She held a mirror with a steady hand. ‘Look at you.’
In anyone else, it would be a gesture of disgust, but with G it was just frankness. And sadness. Mingled with a tiny shot of determination.
This was a conversation whose time had come.
‘Ugh, no thanks.’
Joni was cramming Pringles and Starbursts into her mouth. She was unsure when her next meal might be and still vaguely aware of the need for sustenance.
‘Look at yourself, my girl.’
G’s voice caught as she said the words, but her hand was steady as she held Joni’s chin and prised it upwards. Joni had no choice but to confront the scarecrow staring back from the gilt-edged oval mirror G held firmly in her soft, bumpy hands. That girl looked forty-two, not twenty-two. She didn’t look edgy and carefree. Forever young, as Joni tried to convince herself, on good days.
She looked sick, and sad, and old.
And finished.
At least, that’s what G had told her. And G never lied.
Three hours later, Frankie and Joni were exhausted.
Colm looked shattered too, although, as well as being terrified of Frankie, he was now sufficiently frightened of Joni not to mention the fact. Daragh had been getting progressively worse since Colm had admitted his cousin’s heroin addiction. He was curled inwards, fetal and terrified, as the things that hunted him took hold. Joni knew that right now he was the only one who could get himself through this. How bad was he? And how badly did he want to live?
Plenty of lads coming off heroin didn’t want to live at all.
Not after they realised they had to get through this first.
It had been hard enough for Joni, with the crack, and the rest. She knew enough to know this was harder.
Joni, Frankie and Colm sat beside Daragh, taking turns to use their precious, dwindling water to rinse out the cloth to wipe his brow. An hour ago, he had tried to make a run for it, but Colm, the heavier of the two cousins by forty pounds, had crash tackled him. Daragh had been furious, fleeing demons only he could see. But it was no match for his cousin’s calm determination.
‘Why aren’t you singing?’ Frankie asked, which Joni had been wondering as well.
‘It only makes matters worse.’ Colm was speaking quietly, his accent so thick Joni had to strain carefully to catch the words. ‘He loves the music, for sure. But it … breaks him open when he’s like this. Strange, huh?’
Not so strange, Joni thought. Then she jumped as Frankie quietly grabbed her hand. It felt good, and she tried not to think. She couldn’t afford to break open the thick floodgate of empathy, and let sadness and self-loathing overwhelm her.
‘Time to puke,’ Joni announced, with an effort at cheerfulness. ‘Get him up.’
‘All right, me old man,’ Colm encouraged his cousin, as he took the brunt of Daragh’s almost-inert form, and Joni and Frankie tried valiantly to balance the rest from the other side. ‘Time for walkies, eh? Down the pub, just you and me, back home, eh? Imagine we’re on the Killarney Road, and it’s time to stop and smell the flowers.’
Once they had travelled the few yards across to the vomiting spot, Colm lifted Daragh forcefully from the middle, as Joni had instructed him, and squeezed twice, swiftly.
Nothing happened.
‘It might be he’s all done?’ Colm looked hopeful.
Joni glanced at him doubtfully. Frankie asked, ‘How long did you say it’s been since he stopped?’
‘I’m not precisely sure.’ Colm was being evasive, and Frankie thumped him once, hard, between the shoulderblades. He looked entreatingly at Joni and she rewarded him with an identical thump.
I
’m on her team, not yours, you twat.
The thought surprised her. I really am.
‘Okay, okay,’ Colm admitted. ‘He seemed out of it last night. But I think that might have been the end of his stash.’
‘How the hell did he get it through Customs?’ Joni had thought getting Des through was a miracle.
Colm looked sheepish. ‘Ah, well, you know, we were in that VIP line, and I think my man must have put the stuff someplace only a doctor should go …’
Frankie caught Daragh’s big face in her long fingers.
‘How do you feel, sweetheart?’ She was murmuring softly to him. ‘Do you feel sick, my little love?’
Daragh groaned, forming no words but answering more articulately than if he had.
‘Okay then,’ Frankie soothed. ‘So you need to be sick, and I’m going to help, okay?’ Daragh nodded, groaning again, sweat pouring down his face like tears.
Or maybe it was tears, Joni wasn’t sure.
‘Away with ye. What y’ going to do?’ Colm was still soft, afraid.
‘Help him.’ Frankie looked at Colm as though it were obvious. ‘Keep hold.’
Continuing to hold Daragh’s face, Frankie silently signalled Joni, who immediately moved over to her, and helped as Frankie skilfully used the fingers of one hand to prise open his mouth. With the other hand, she jabbed two long fingers into his slack mouth. They seemed to disappear into his neck, and time seemed to slow as she extracted them and repeated the motion. Then it happened.
Great, long heaves breaking apart the very core of him. Grey green, the stuff covered the loamy floor at their feet, gathering in pools and mingling with the muck and decay of the rainforest. Going on and on until it seemed impossible there was anything left. And then finishing with one final heave.
When it was over, Joni motioned to Colm to take Daragh back to where he had been lying previously. He was spent and shaking, but the wildness was gone from his eyes, and he looked like he might sleep, at least for a few moments.
Now Joni was shaking. She reached for her absent locket under her shirt and looked up at the stars, fighting for space in the crowded sky. For the last seven years, whenever she had looked up at the sky, Joni had wondered whether Frankie was doing the same. And now they were together, looking at the same sky.
Somehow she’d let herself get used to having Frankie around.
‘Why did you come, Colm?’
Joni was surprised by her own voice. It sounded deep and solid. Like Frankie’s.
‘You had to know this would happen. More to it, why did he come?’
Colm paused, and he too examined the sky, as though seeking answers from it, and started lamenting in what had to be Gaelic.
Joni nodded sagely. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’
Colm shrugged. ‘I was no help. Been taking care o’ him since he was a babby, but I’ve been useful as a lighthouse on a bog with this. We had to do something. Didn’t talk ’bout it. We just threw our hats in, and let the fairies decide.’
Joni rolled her eyes at Frankie, who rolled hers back. Fucking Irish.
‘Right, for that, and for making me stick my fingers down your cousin’s throat, you work the camera.’ Frankie tapped the sliver of electronics in his hand. ‘If we don’t turn the video diary in, we’re out.’
Two hours later, dawn was breaking, Daragh was sleeping peacefully and Colm’s beautiful Irish lilt wafted down the hill like the heady scent of lavender.
‘Ah, dawn breaks o’er the jungle and our spirits are high as we head home.’
A lie, Joni thought. They hadn’t moved an inch and had no idea where they were. But well-executed bullshit. Points for that.
‘Ah yes, look at that, just as I was saying a wee bit earlier. These rolling hills remind me of my home back in …’
Joni shook her head in wonder, looking at the impenetrable jungle. Even with the first light of dawn filtering through the foliage, it looked forbidding. About as far from bogs and shamrocks and leprechauns as anything ever was.
Colm seemed to be reaching the end of his monologue, and looked over at Frankie as he switched the ‘off’ button on the little camera. ‘What now?’
Frankie was as crisp and efficient as if she had slept a luxurious nine hours on a featherbed. ‘Right, Daragh’s going to need water, and we’re out,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I heard running water before. I’ll go and assess the situation, but I won’t be long. And when I get back, rest-break is officially over.’
Joni looked questioningly at Frankie, who smiled back and shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, loping off.
Colm flicked the camera back on, capturing Frankie disappearing down a side path. ‘Ah, sure and all as I’d kill for a pint o’ the black stuff right now, the Mistress Frannie has gone off to find us some water. How ’bout I offer you a few more minutes of Irish loving? Here we go …’
He drew in a breath manfully, as though even he were sick of the sound of his own pretty voice, and started low and sad. ‘“Musha rig um du rum da …”’
Joni groaned. With a trembling Daragh to cover up, a good many video-diary minutes had been occupied with Colm’s maudlin drinking songs. Joni could almost hear the snap of the trapdoor as it swallowed the two cousins whole. She moved over to Daragh, who was beginning to stir, and reached for his hand. ‘It’s going to be okay, my dear,’ she assured him.
Daragh groaned again. ‘I’m such a useless shite.’
Joni shook her head. No.
‘I am so.’ He hiccupped sadly. ‘You don’t know. I’ve always been this way. Dependent on something. M’ cousin. M’ mammy. Now this.’
Joni felt compelled to disagree, but wasn’t quite sure who she was defending. ‘Everyone’s dependent on something,’ she said, with what she hoped passed for wisdom. ‘Some people just hide it better than others. And you know what? We can all get through it, in the end.’ After all, she’d gotten through it, hadn’t she? ‘We’re stronger than we think.’
She stopped for a moment, thinking about what she’d said. Maybe it was true. Her mum, dependent on her dad, even after all these years. Frankie, dependent on that stupid prick of a husband.
Daragh hiccupped again. ‘Oh, no. Me mam’s going to be so ashamed. What will they make of ’t all down at St Gert’s?’
‘It’s okay,’ she assured. ‘No-one’s going to know about what happened here tonight. I think we’ve managed to pull it off.’
It was important to her, somehow, that no-one find out about Daragh, about what he had been through. Especially The Stapler.
‘Now, Frankie’ll be back in the next few minutes, and then we’re going to have to move off. Do you think you can?’
Daragh groaned what sounded like a pained assent, and then mumbled: ‘Aye, aye, missus. Whatever you say. You are truly the boss and I am merely the shitkicker.’
Huh, the shitkicker. For the first time, Joni thought about Nigel. She remembered what he had said about visiting the island during filming for ‘due diligence’. The thought pleased her. She imagined what it would be like to be with someone that together, that normal. And flecky mint-jelly sexy. Pretty good, probably. She patted Daragh kindly on the stomach.
‘Good lad, we’ll be off in a jiffy then.’ But which way?
Chapter 9
Frances
Dawn was breaking, weaving gentle light between tree trunks as Frances tramped along one of the side tracks she’d spotted earlier. She filled her lungs with air, finally able to breathe properly. Not that the oxygen away from their ‘camp’ was any less humid or weighed down with the cloying aroma of a forest on heat. It was just … away.
Watching Daragh go through withdrawal had been as harrowing as it always was. Five years of working with addicts hadn’t yet anaesthetised her to their pain, to the agony of their dependency. It still left her hollow, exhausted.
Walking along, she tried not to reflect on what she’d just witnessed, but it was impossible to ignore. With Joni beside her, Dar
agh’s distress had forced her to confront the ugly reality of what her sister must have been through.
Alone.
She’d fervently avoided thinking about Joni in that condition over the years and, tucked up safe and sound in Kew, she’d managed it. But out here …
Daragh had Colm. His cousin. Who, despite breaking into song every two minutes like a bloody wandering minstrel, had at least been there for him.
Who had been there for Joni? Through the coke, and what had come after?
Frances heard the tinkling of water grow louder, and she resolutely followed it, walking faster, trying to outrun the thought. The guilt. A branch scratched at her face and she didn’t even feel it. The dank earthy smells of soil, decayed leaves and heavy tropical blooms didn’t even register.
Until a waft of something alien tickled her senses.
Smoke? Cigarette smoke?
Dormant nicotine receptors roared to life and Frances’s mouth watered instantly. She’d smoked for a year when she first went to university, and had absolutely loved it. It was so tactile. But Edward had hated it and she had known giving up was the most sensible thing to do.
But she still missed it – fiercely at times.
And right now, with the tobacco smoke getting closer and filling her lungs, she would have killed for one. Who was she kidding? After what she’d just been through she’d have traded G’s million quid for it.
Hell, she would even have shagged Takahiro.
And then Frances became aware of something else. Voices. An argument. Coming from the direction of the smoke. Ahead. Not loud, not yelling. But angry whispers, the intent just as clear.
And they were heading her way. The other team must have been closer than they thought. Frances looked around and dove behind a stand of trees to the side of the track as Nick and Cheryl came into view in the dawn gloom.