Tightrope

by Marnie Riches

  Acid. Boo wasn’t a stranger to it though she had not yet dropped any herself. She’d witnessed her mother tripping with some friends when she was only twelve. It had been frightening to see the old lady out of control ; standing there in the nip, wielding a paintbrush and a palette like some fucking mad Spanish surrealist, transposed into a damp British terrace, being groped from behind by some wanker with an acoustic guitar called Chet.

  ‘I’ll give it a miss, thanks.’ Boo watched Monty as he bowled along the corridor, arms outstretched as though he was a Spitfire on a bombing raid. Eton’s finest, tripping off his tits. ‘It was a close shave with McIntyre and Bert. They’ve got my ticket. I’d better keep my nose clean or I’m out, thanks to that grassing little Holy Jo next door.’ She remembered the burning embarrassment when the accommodation manager and caretaker discovered a veritable mattress of empty lager cans, hastily hidden beneath her duvet. Copping to a drink problem had been the perfect tactic to divert their attention away from the big ball of super-skunk only feet from where they had been standing. Amazing what a quick squirt of deodorant and a blast of Durham fresh air could mask.

  ‘Don’t be such a boring cow,’ Antonia said, holding the tab out. ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway, Boo. We’ll have an amazing time.’

  Every fibre of Boo’s being wanted to join her friends. More of them burst through the fire door at the end, clearly already high. Mitch was among them, not so much as stealing a glance her way.

  ‘Forget it. I’m not getting involved if he’s with you.’ Boo folded her arms tightly across her chest in a bid to hold in her mixed feelings for this on-off Casanova. He made her feel like she was the centre of his universe, one day and a black-hole wasteland, another.

  Antonia got to her feet. ‘I thought you guys were good. Suit yourself.’ She pelted down the corridor after the others, whooping with glee.

  Boo retreated inside her room, fully intending to tackle the essay on Nietzsche that was already two weeks late. With night falling outside, she drew the curtains and put on her desk lamp, cocooning herself in a womb of dated soft furnishings and blond-wood standard-issue furniture. Now this modest space, that doubled as home, was clean of all drugs paraphernalia and booze, she could finally breathe. And it had been far easier to clean up than to do the essay and tackle the issues of her folks.

  She sat at her desk, picked up the letter yet again and read her mother’s sloping, looping hand, inviting her home, when previously she’d told Boo to stay away. Explaining that the enclosed cheque for fifty quid and the change of heart was down to her dad’s worsening depression, ‘ . . . which you’re so much better at dealing with than me’. There was no affection in or between the lines.

  Boo sighed. Folded the letter and shoved it into her pen pot. The banks were shut until Monday anyway and her essay crisis had reached fever pitch. Time to knuckle down.

  Just as she put pen to paper, there was a knock at her door.

  ‘I’m busy!’ she shouted, irritation making her skin feel too tight for her body.

  ‘It’s me.’

  She broke out in a sudden sweat as she realised who her visitor was. Mitch. The bad boyfriend whose overbearing attentions made her feel like she actually mattered. The good lover whose mind games made her feel so worthless and hollowed out. She’d seen him only days ago, and they’d parted on bad terms that had left her in tears. Screw him. Don’t answer the door.

  Boo glanced down at her essay and felt her resolve melt away. She never had been good at playing hard to get. Games weren’t her thing.

  Knowing she’d regret it later, sensing the butterflies in her stomach take flight, she opened the door. Mitch was standing before her with a lopsided smile on his face. The tiny pupils in his long-lashed doe-eyes, just visible in the murk of the lamplight cast from her darkened room, were unequivocal proof that he was high.

  He stroked her face and leaned in for a kiss. ‘Why won’t you join in the fun, Boo Boo?’

  Offering him her cheek, she found herself repelled by the smell of booze on his breath. Too reminiscent of her mother. ‘I’m busy. Leave me be, Mitch. I can’t do this.’

  His hand enveloped hers. His palms and fingertips were dry and warm ; the connection, electrifying.

  ‘I miss you, Boo,’ he said. ‘You’re the love of my life.’ There was sincerity in his handsome face. Wasn’t there? Or was it just the acid kicking in? Didn’t you love everyone if you were having a good trip?

  Boo felt the visceral ache of needing his embrace. Mitch hadn’t been her first by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d been the first to tell her he loved her. He was the only person in her eighteen years who’d looked her in the eye and promised her the world. How she needed to believe him.

  She pushed him gently backwards into the corridor. ‘It’s OK you saying that, but what happens the next time I say something that upsets you or I accidentally look at another guy the wrong way? I feel like I’m treading on eggshells all the time with you.’

  Mitch reached out and stroked her cheek with his left hand. Pulled from his jeans pocket the brightly coloured sheet of acid tabs with his right. ‘All work and no play makes Boo a dull girl, right? And I need you to take this trip with me. You make me feel safe.’

  With her essay abandoned, negotiating the draughty corridors of St Mary’s on wobbly legs, Boo felt time slowed and space stretched as she followed Mitch on his narcotic journey. Wired with the thrill of a new experience and the rush of love for this narcotically addictive bad boy who meant well, her every emotion felt heightened. As if painted in the same bright technicolours as the paper that held the acid. The smell of dust and paint on the walls stung in her nostrils. She was aware of the buzz of electricity all around her, as if she could hear it thrumming through the cables beneath the plaster of the walls and ceilings. She imagined the blood coursing around his body, his life force connected to hers through shimmering ripples of energy in the air.

  All laughing like drains and talking absolute crap, the five of them had already been ejected from Mary’s Bar by the grumpy barman, Thom, who had a zero-bullshit policy when dealing with unruly undergrads. Now, Antonia was cartwheeling outside Holy Jo’s room.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ Boo said, feeling like her voice was being beamed from the fluorescent lights overhead. ‘I don’t want any hassle off that nosy bitch.’

  Sure enough, her neighbour emerged from her room, surveying the situation with a judgemental look on her perky little face. Clearly wondering what Jesus would do when faced with a gang of marauding stoners ; stiff body language beneath the preppy skirt and twin set.

  ‘Look, Boo. If you don’t tell your friends to keep it down, I’ll have to call Bert,’ Holy Jo said. ‘You’re all being really selfish. I’m trying to read.’

  Boo scrutinised her adversary. Grim determination written into every taut muscle and the flinching sinew of her jaw. ‘Mind your own business, you hypocrite.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ The indignation in her voice raised her pitch by almost an octave.

  ‘It’s OK when you wake me up at 5.30 a.m. every fucking morning to go rowing?’

  Holy Jo had no answer for that, apparently. ‘I’ll pray for you.’

  ‘Don’t. You know what you need to do?’ Boo moved in towards her, but the girl stood her ground. She seemed to grow in stature while Boo could feel herself shrinking. ‘You need to take the stick out of your arse, you do. Now, get back in your room and stop pissing on our parade. We’re not doing you any harm, are we?’

  Mitch started to sprint towards them, a look of fury on his face.

  ‘Why do you have to be such a grass?’ His voice was so rough with hostility that the colour drained instantly from Holy Jo’s face. ‘Are you jealous that Boo knows how to enjoy herself? Is that it? You’re taking it out on her because you’ve got nothing else in your life? You’re a boring, nosy, uptight little virgin with nothing better to do. Get back to reading your Bible and mind your own business!’

>   She stepped wordlessly back over the threshold to her room and slammed the door in his face. He thumped the wood so hard that the door shook in its frame.

  ‘Leave it, Mitch,’ Boo said, pulling him away, startled by his sudden mood swing towards aggression. ‘I don’t need you fighting my battles. You’re making it worse.’

  This time, he kicked the door. ‘Cow!’

  The other occupants of the corridor started to poke their heads out of their rooms to see what was going on.

  Clutching her well-worn chunky cardigan close – a gift that her dad had knitted for her during one of those agoraphobic spells when he’d not felt able to leave the house – Boo finally managed to wrestle Mitch into the shared kitchen, where they sat down at a small table. The others were gone, now. Moved on to someone’s room to finish their psychedelic adventure beyond prying eyes, and where Jimi Hendrix could be readily brought back to life on someone’s sound system. But here, beneath the harsh flickering light, with the stink of grease in their nostrils, Mitch was starting to twitch and peer round nervously. There were deep shadows beneath his eyes.

  The light flickered off.

  The light flickered on.

  His love flickered off.

  His love flickered on.

  Boo watched her boyfriend move from good trip to bad trip beneath the glare. She reached out to take his hand and offer him comfort.

  ‘How much did you take, Mitch?’

  He was scratching at his arm. Staring at the skin, now. Horror etched deep into the contours of his sweat-drenched face.

  ‘Get it off me. Get it off, Boo.’ His voice was small now, like a boy in the grip of a nightmare.

  ‘There’s nothing there. Chill out, love.’

  ‘The blisters. Can’t you see them? I’m contaminated. I know it.’ His focus shifted to her and the look of fear transformed into a thunderous scowl. ‘You. It’s all you, isn’t it? You made this happen.’ He reached out and took a swipe at her. ‘You’re breathing poison into the air.’

  Boo shuffled hastily backwards in her seat, tensing as the chair toppled almost in slow motion, and crashed to the ground. The tiles rippled beneath her with the impact. Or did they? She felt no pain but the agony of Mitch’s accusations that she was a pollutant. It was a searing poker, stoking memories of her mother bawling her out, telling her that she always ruined everything.

  ‘Fuck you!’ she shouted, scrambling to her feet as he lurched out of his chair towards her.

  Breathing raggedly, Boo pushed Mitch out of the way and ran.

  Swallowing back the tears, sensing the fuzzy edges around normality as she started to come down, she sought safety in the company of others in the bar. Boo sat in a corner, sipping a pint of cider while she watched the rugby players sloshing their drinks around and filling the already choking air with sweat, testosterone and their sickly-sweet exhalation of beer fumes on a high tide of raucous song.

  Mitch is no good for me. I’ve got to ditch him, she thought. Holy Jo said he was a bad influence and she was right, for all she’s a square and a grass. He’s just too much. I wanted to get away from Mum and her boozing and drugs, but Mitch is turning me into a carbon copy of the old bag. And he’s suffocating me. This is my only chance to make a new life for myself and I’m fucking it up.

  The more of her cider she drank, the colder the bar suddenly felt. The warm light and laughter of the others felt grey, thin and disingenuous. It was time to go. And yet, could she go back to her room when Mitch was still hanging around, nearby?

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’

  Boo looked up to find one of the rugby players staring down at her with a grin on his square-jawed face. It seemed charming one moment, leering the next. Flickering on. Flickering off.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  His gaze was fixed on her chest. She looked down to see that her top had torn, gaping open at the cleavage. Suddenly, she was acutely aware of the naked flesh of her legs, barely covered by her denim hot pants. She stretched her cardigan over her knees. But the guy’s eyes steadfastly followed the contours of her breasts beneath the yellow silk blouse.

  ‘Buy you a drink?’ he asked.

  Say no. You don’t need this. Not when you’re coming down. This guy’s not right for you.

  He was big for a fresher – muscular and tall, already with the facial hair of a man in his late twenties. What was his name? Did it matter? She knew his room was as far away from hers as it was possible to get. Far enough away from Mitch to buy her a night of safety.

  ‘Yeah. Go on. Mine’s a cider.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Bev

  ‘Who’s there?’ Bev shouted in the dim light of the car park, her voice echoing off the concrete walls and floor.

  Her skin puckered into goosebumps. She felt eyes on her. But looking around the murky, vast space, she could see only cars parked like silent sentries. She could hear only the Mancunian rain pattering in earnest outside.

  ‘I know you’re there!’ she shouted, the bravado almost sticking in her throat. She clutched her bag tightly across her body, acutely aware of the hairs on her arms standing on end and the tingling sensation of adrenaline coursing around her body. ‘I’m calling the police.’

  Yeah. After I’m in the bloody car, she thought, trying desperately to get the key in the door’s lock and failing thanks to her shaking hand.

  Footsteps. One, two, three. She was certain she had heard them just then. But still, Bev could see nothing in the industrial concrete space which was deserted except for her and the empty, alarmed vehicles with their immobiliser lights winking red in silence. Feeling like she was going mad, she was just about to look beneath her car to see if she could spot a pair of feet, when she heard several women noisily ascending the ramp to her level, chatting animatedly among themselves.

  ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ she said, finally sliding the key home in the lock.

  She’d never clambered into a car and locked the doors so quickly in her life. As she pulled out of her space, she glanced through her rear-view mirror. Saw a man standing against the wall in the shadows, watching her. So, she’d been right. Who the hell was it? A mugger? Another driver? Was his appearance a coincidence? Perhaps her overwrought imagination was playing tricks on her.

  A horn honked. Her attention was diverted to a car coming down the ramp from the level above. Flashing headlamps. Honking again. Bev slammed on the courtesy car’s brakes, coming to a juddering halt. An angry-looking man in the driver’s seat of the other car, was shaking his fist at her and mouthing what was clearly ‘stupid bitch’ through the windscreen.

  ‘Fuck you, pal!’ Bev shouted, offering him the finger. But privately admitting he’d had right of way. She glanced in her rear-view mirror once more. Her imagined pursuer had gone. She shook her head.

  Feeding her ticket into the machine and escaping onto Sale’s shining wet streets, she exhaled heavily. ‘I think the mildew’s gone to my brain. I’m losing the plot.’

  Driving back through the leafy boulevard of Brooklands Road towards Hale, Bev admired the large 1930s houses. Wished she hadn’t let Rob the Knob bully her during their divorce negotiations into handing over all the equity from their London home. Not that she’d had much choice after he’d blackened her name professionally with trumped-up allegations of sleeping her way through the staff list, fiddling her expenses and suffering from ropey mental health. Judges weren’t too impressed by those kinds of things, it turned out, and Rob was very, very good at lying. After they’d split and sold up to move North, where the cost of living and the pace of working life was more palatable for newly single Rob with leisure time on his mind, he’d bought himself a new super-pad in Didsbury. She’d ended up in a damp rented basement flat and subject to psychiatric scrutiny. Laughably, with the help of his top-drawer solicitor and the hindrance of her own bargain-basement legal loser, Rob had made her feel like he was doing her a favour. And she’d just swallowed his shit wholesale, fearing Hope would be beyond
her reach entirely if she complained.

  Deep in resentful thought, Bev was startled when her phone rang. Angie’s name on the screen. Glancing around to ensure there were no police patrol cars knocking around, she answered and pressed the phone to her ear.

  ‘Go on. What is it?’

  Angie sounded jittery on the other end. ‘You won’t believe what just happened to me.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘Yes. But not before Jerry nearly found me, hiding behind the sofa bed in his office. I can’t stop shaking. Can you pop over?’

  Coming to a halt at the roundabout, Bev caught sight of a cop car to her right. ‘I’m driving. Can’t talk. Gotta go to the vacuum shop in Hale.’ She ended the call abruptly and flung the phone onto the passenger seat. Realised there had been a message from someone. Surely not another reply from her target?

  Pulling into Hale village, she navigated her way past the Maseratis, Ferraris and plain old BMWs, waiting to park in the scant number of spaces available. Bev skirted in front of some yummy mummy in an Audi Q8 to steal a space outside Costello’s electrical shop. She ignored the woman’s passive-aggressive smile and hand gestures that she could go right ahead and cut her up. Stuff her. Bev needed her repaired vacuum cleaner back and she was damned if she was going to walk quarter of a mile, carrying an old Dyson the length of the village.

  But first, the message. It wasn’t via LinkedIn. With a thudding heart, she pressed on the Messenger app’s icon. It was Tim.

  Rent?

  That was it. No, ‘Hello Bev, how are you?’ No please or thank you.

  Heated by a sudden flash of anger, so that she imagined she could see steam rising from the car’s wet bonnet, she thumbed back a curt reply.

  Mould?

  Fishing among the detritus in her anorak pocket, she took out a crumpled receipt for the haul of cough medicines, painkillers and throat sweets she’d recently bought in the local chemist. She straightened it out and photographed it, attaching the snap to her message. Next, she took a screengrab of a local solicitors’ firm that firmly believed, ‘Where there’s blame, there’s a claim’ and attached that. Just because he was married to her best friend and she was living in their basement, didn’t mean she had to take his crap. The wanker could wait for his money.