by Abigail Dean
The Rages became more frequent. There were times, at school, when he decided not to think of the tepee and the childish little lamp inside of it, and instead thought of what Father had done to him, or the fact that Mandy was marrying somebody from Scotland and would have to discontinue their sessions, or Mrs Coulson-Browne’s failure to read the first page of his memoir. When he returned to himself, he would look around to see a ring of children’s faces, and delight in their horror.
Delight: there was something to be made of that. Through the Rages, he acquired a kind of notoriety, which meant that a select group in his year – the parentless; the awkward; the rebels, and the frail girls who clung to them – accepted his company. They called themselves The Clan. The leader of The Clan was Jimmy Delaney, who had three tattoos and was rumoured to have fucked a student teacher on last year’s geography field trip (although nobody, and least of all Gabriel, knew if that was true). At weekends, they gathered in parks, or in the bedroom of whoever’s family was absent that night, and smoked sparse joints, or took it in turns to touch the girls who had turned up. Gabriel wasn’t cool or useful enough to be at the centre of things, but he liked having people to sit with at lunch, and that they were interested in his story. When he was drunk, he would tell them everything that he could muster, but whatever he said, Jimmy pressed for more. ‘Why didn’t you just kill him?’ he asked, about Father, and, ‘Is it true that your old man was a pervert?’ They were the kind of kids whom the Coulson-Brownes detested, and Gabriel liked that, too.
At home, his career was floundering. Mrs Coulson-Browne lobbied publishers and television studios, and contacted local celebrities, asking if they might be interested in meeting her son. There had been a small spike in interest upon the anniversary of the escape, and again during Mother’s trial, but the story appeared to have reached its conclusion. It didn’t help that Gabriel no longer looked like the angular child carried from Moor Woods Road, captured in a policeman’s arms in a picture that was longlisted for the World Press Photo of the Year (Breaking News). Now, he was a scrawny teenage boy with glasses and Mother’s dry skin and hair which got darker by the day.
He could sense that the Coulson-Brownes were losing interest in him. There was no cruelty in it, but a gradual detachment, as somebody might set aside a toy from their childhood. When he had first been adopted, the Coulson-Brownes had liked him present at their parties, which weren’t really parties at all, but gatherings of neighbours, taking it in turns to see the insides of one another’s houses. He would be sent into the lounge, armed with toothpick cheese and a bowl of crisps, and instructed to Work the Room. But ever since the Lawsons had come for dinner, it had been suggested that he stay in his room.
The Lawsons lived in the only five-bedroom house on the street and had a car with a 2.5-litre engine. Gabriel, precarious on the spare chair, and eating twice as much as everybody else, had sat through ninety minutes of side returns; prawn cocktails; the influx of traffic to the new estate; beef Wellington; other people’s children. Finally, over caramel flan, the conversation became interesting. The Lawsons were narrating the story of their son, ever a risk-taker, who was encumbered in a Genevan hospital with a twenty-five-centimetre plate screwed to his left tibia.
‘What’s the one thing we told him?’ Mr Lawson said. ‘“Stay on piste.” And now where are we? Spending Christmas in orthopaedics, in bloody Switzerland.’
‘The price of those hotels,’ Mrs Lawson said, ‘at such short notice—’
‘I have a metal plate,’ said Gabriel, and the conversation crashed to a halt. He touched his jaw. Turned his head to show them. ‘Here,’ he said.
He had arrived at the hospital with severe malocclusion, he explained. He liked that he knew a word which they didn’t. The growth centre in his left jaw was damaged, so one side of his face had turned out different from the other. Gabriel and Mandy had been invited to the X-ray viewer to survey the damage, and they sat together at a desk while a maxillofacial surgeon – that was the mouth – talked them through Gabriel’s skull. It was funny, to see yourself in skeleton. The teeth were so much longer than you thought. At the end, Gabriel asked if he could come back post-operation, to see how the metal looked in his jaw. ‘We’ve got a medic, here,’ the surgeon said, and within a week, everyone on the ward was calling him Dr Gracie.
‘Holidays in hospital were actually OK,’ Gabriel said. ‘They had this big chocolate egg hunt, at Easter. Christmas is probably pretty cool.’
Nobody was eating, now. The Lawsons lowered their eyes. Mr Coulson-Browne gave a tight, humourless laugh, and picked up his spoon. ‘These hotels,’ he said. ‘How much are we talking?’
In her desperation, Mrs Coulson-Browne suggested finding Gabriel an agent, although she didn’t know of anyone in particular. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you have to think about which avenue you want to pursue, Gabriel. Whether that’s television, or autobiography, or something like Matilda.’
Matilda was the Coulson-Brownes’ real daughter, who had once been destined to become a ballet dancer; then, when she was overly developed, a West End lead; and, when she couldn’t sing the requisite range, a backing dancer on a stadium tour. Finally, she worked as a choreographer on cruise ships, as far away from home as possible. Whenever she stayed with the Coulson-Brownes, she viewed Gabriel with a combination of trepidation and pity, and she tried to avoid being alone with him in a room. At the time, he had thought that she was frightened, although now, at the age that she had been then, he understood. She had been ashamed.
‘What do you suggest that he do?’ Mr Coulson-Browne asked, when Matilda was back from the Caribbean for Christmas, and they were sitting for dinner. Matilda looked at Gabriel, then at the table, and shrugged.
‘I don’t think I’m the expert,’ she said.
‘You must have some advice – from your experiences.’
‘In that case, I think that he should try to be happy.’
‘But his story!’ Mrs Coulson-Browne said. ‘That’s a story that needs to be told.’
‘There’s somebody that I know,’ Matilda said, ‘in London. He’s an agent for a few celebrities. They’re not big ones, though. And he’s not the most savoury of characters, from everything that I’ve heard.’
‘See,’ Mrs Coulson-Browne said. ‘I think that would be very useful.’
‘I’ll give you his number,’ Matilda said, to Gabriel. ‘If you really want it.’
She wrote the name and number on a CocoCruises pad, and he repeated it, in his head: Oliver Alvin. ‘You look after yourself, Gabe,’ she said, and squeezed his shoulder. When she left for St Lucia in the New Year, he thought for a strange, stupid moment of asking if she would take him with her.
The first time The Clan asked him to feign a Rage was in a mock examination, in January. ‘What we need,’ Jimmy said, as they waited at the assembly hall doors, ‘is extenuating circumstances.’ He surveyed his cronies, smiling. ‘Something traumatic,’ he said.
‘Has anyone got a weapon?’ Gabriel asked. Nobody laughed, but they all looked at him and then at each other, and he realized that there had been a conversation – an in-joke – that he had missed.
‘How are you feeling, Gabe?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Are you feeling angry?’ He laughed, and slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. ‘I could really do without this shit,’ he said.
The hallway doors were opened; the students shuffled inside, clutching clear plastic pencil cases. The clock loomed at the front of the room.
Gabriel’s seat was at the back. He rested his chin on his arms and surveyed the rows of heads. The clean, functioning brains within them, awaiting further instructions. Closer to the front, Jimmy turned to find him, and winked. The scripts were already on the desks. The invigilator directed the students to begin. When would be the right time, Gabriel thought, and could he really do it, here, on purpose – this strange, private thing, which he and Mandy had spent so many months trying to subdue?
It was a two-hour examination. He wait
ed until half an hour had passed. He guessed at a few token questions, reluctant to commit to more. With every shift of the clock, his opportunity diminished; if too much time went by then the scripts might be counted anyway. At forty minutes, he stood up so quickly that his chair toppled to the floor. Then, with every head turning through the silence towards him, he began.
He threw himself onto the desk behind him and its occupant shrieked and darted from his path. With his tongue lolling, he slumped to the floor and began to hammer upon it, as though the ground might split and – at last – swallow him up. He hissed and howled every terrible word he knew, and, seeing the teachers advance, he flipped away from them, a fish on the deck, gasping and gnawing and seizing anything in his reach: the legs of desks and chairs and pupils retreating, and, at some point, a Hello Kitty pencil case, which he hurled at the advancing charge, scattering a whole rainbow of BIC Magic Felt Pens across the hall.
It took four of them to capture him, and, swaying mazy and half mad, march him to the headmaster. The students lined the corridor to watch him pass, and a few blinks of applause fluttered in the crowd. ‘Amazing,’ mouthed Jimmy, and Gabriel smiled.
After the examination, he did it on request. He performed at the leisure centre and at the cinema; at the supermarket, while The Clan carried out a few six-packs; at the entrance to an expensive restaurant, which the Coulson-Brownes booked for special occasions. There were moments, in the midst of it, when he couldn’t tell if he was suffering from a Rage or feigning it; when he couldn’t tell where his sickness ended and Jimmy’s bidding began. The Coulson-Brownes balked at the school’s suggestion that Gabriel succumbed to the Rages at particularly opportune times, and threatened what Mr Coulson-Browne’s solicitor called a two-pronged reprisal: litigation, and the press. The school, conscious that Gabriel would be leaving at the end of the year, agreed to tolerate him for a few more months.
He took his real exams in isolation. He didn’t know many of the answers. When school was done with, The Clan gathered at a table outside one of the town’s more lenient pubs, and he drank until all he could see was Jimmy’s face, floating in plural at the more important end of the table.
He had promised the Coulson-Brownes that he would look for a job, but for some months he left the house each morning and wandered the streets, applying for nothing. He dropped in on members of The Clan, most of whom had started college or apprenticeships, and who rarely asked him in. Jimmy, who had crammed for his exams, decided that he might want to go to university, after all. He was studying serious subjects, which took up all his time, and whenever Gabriel called by, he wasn’t at home. Gabriel took night shifts at the bigger supermarket in town, which meant that he could sleep for much of the day; that prevented him from having to think about how to fill the hours.
He turned nineteen at the Coulson-Browne dinner table, two years later, over salmon en croûte and a shop-bought Victoria sponge. ‘I hate to bring this up tonight,’ said Mrs Coulson-Browne. ‘But we need to know your plans, Gabriel.’ She turned to her husband, encouragingly, and he nodded.
‘As you know,’ said Mr Coulson-Browne, ‘we’ve been very generous.’
That was reasonable, Gabriel thought. He had first come to this house half his life ago, on an introduction weekend. He had sat on the plump leather sofas and listened to how welcome he would be. He had mistaken the neat, beige rooms for things that he could fill. He looked at the wooden placemats, with scenes of the English countryside, and at the crystal animals, and at the piano which nobody could play. He would miss none of it. That night, he found Matilda’s notepad, sat in his tepee, and called Oliver Alvin.
Oliver Alvin’s office wasn’t what Gabriel had expected. It was in East London, above a wholesale fabric store, and in the waiting room there was a woman wearing square black sunglasses, threading a tissue between the plastic and the skin to dry her eyes. Oliver’s secretary, who was seventeen and still using Tipp-Ex on her nails, asked Gabriel to wait. There was nothing to read, so Gabriel surveyed the room. Framed photographs of Oliver and his clients looked back at him. He didn’t recognize anybody.
Forty minutes after his scheduled appointment, the secretary asked him to go through: Oliver was ready to see him. Nobody appeared to have left the office. He stood, straightened his tie (which was Mr Coulson-Browne’s tie, and which he had spent half an hour tying and untying that morning), and collected the portfolio which he had assembled over the last week, and which commenced with his photograph, beneath the words: ‘Hello. I’m Gabriel Gracie, a survivor.’
Oliver was forgettably good-looking, like that actor in a soap, or a person in a stock image. His office smelt of expensive cologne. ‘There are some things that you can do cheaply,’ Oliver would tell Gabriel, in bed, a few years later. ‘But not suits, and not aftershave.’ Gabriel never did find out what the cheap things were, because everything about Oliver was expensive. He wore a vintage Rolex, which he had purchased from his watch dealer; his shoes and his wallet had been made in Milan; he would order the oldest wine he could find on the menu. When Gabriel came into the room, he was sitting at his desk in a plum suit, typing on a MacBook. He didn’t look up.
‘I think that we have an appointment,’ Gabriel said, and Oliver blinked.
‘Gabriel,’ Gabriel said. ‘Gabriel Gracie.’
‘Of course,’ Oliver said. ‘OK! Gabriel. So. Tell me about yourself.’
With both hands, Gabriel held out his portfolio. Oliver took it, turned a few pages, and slapped it onto the desk.
‘Like I said. Tell me about yourself.’
What was there to lose? He started with Moor Woods Road. He found that Oliver was listening to him – nodding here, taken aback there – and, emboldened, he sat down at the desk and continued. He recalled all of the details that Jimmy had asked to hear, the meat off the story’s bones, and he gave that up, too. When he stopped speaking he felt exhilarated, then exposed. He looked down to his lap and waited for Oliver’s verdict.
‘You’re certainly more interesting than the Coulson-Browne girl,’ Oliver said. ‘I’ll give you that. And it’s in my remit. I’ve represented a number of victims – terrorism, near-misses, some really traumatic stuff – and they’ve done OK.’
Oliver frowned, calculating something crucial on his fingers.
‘I’ll be honest with you,’ he said. ‘It would be better if you were the one who had got the others out. The one who escaped. But there isn’t much we can do about that. And there’s still a few opportunities I can think of. Let me see what I can do.’
They talked business. Here he was: Gabriel Gracie, nineteen, speaking with his agent in the Big Smoke. They talked about what events Gabriel would and wouldn’t be willing to attend (‘How do you feel about gunge?’ Oliver asked), if there was any way of contacting Girl A (there wasn’t), and the cut to which Oliver would be entitled (which seemed to Gabriel – even then – more like a fucking haemorrhage).
He celebrated with the Coulson-Brownes, with quiche Lorraine and champagne from France.
Most of the work involved true crime conventions. In his first year on the circuit, he would take to the stage to speak, but later on he tended to be assigned to a table in the lobby of a three-star hotel, sitting behind his name card and signing miscellaneous items. He was both impressed and disturbed by the extent of knowledge attendees had about his family. One evening, a woman presented to him a small, filthy T-shirt which she claimed had belonged to Eve. He recoiled from it and quickly recovered. Oliver would be unimpressed by his squeamishness, and he had no way of knowing if it was a genuine article. He considered the cardboard box of his own childhood belongings, which were stored and sealed in the Coulson-Brownes’ attic, and wondered, fleetingly, what they might be worth.
There was increased demand for him in the autumn, when people started thinking about Halloween. These events were more challenging. At the true crime gatherings, he felt that people were waiting for him: when he started to speak, a hush descended across t
he room. The Halloween gigs were louder, and few people knew who he was. He appeared at universities, and at the nightclubs of small, sullen towns. He looked at the crowds, ragged in fancy dress, and understood that the majority of the attendees were the same age as him. They, like him, would have been nine years old when the police entered the house on Moor Woods Road, and were unlikely to remember much of the story. He was usually appointed to speak for five minutes and to introduce the next band, but he rarely filled the allocated time. ‘You need to make it scarier,’ a student representative instructed him. ‘A little less depressing.’
He had expected that there might be more glamour to this life. For the most part, the hotel rooms were tired and the beer was warm, and it was usually raining. He had anticipated spending his time in London, or perhaps abroad, speaking to journalists or to crowded halls. He had believed that his story could be an inspiration. In the end, he did make it to London, but not to inspire the masses. He moved to London because he was in love with Oliver.
It started in December, when Gabriel’s work was drying up. An empty email from Oliver. Subject line: WE NEED TO TALK. They met for dinner in London, at the restaurant of a celebrity chef whom Gabriel had never heard of. Oliver looked unwell. The hair at his temples was damp, and behind the cologne there was another smell, something like old food, which Gabriel didn’t recognize. Right at the start of the meal, as soon as drinks were served, Oliver came to it. ‘You need to diversify,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘You need to add another string to your bow,’ Oliver said, and when Gabriel continued to look at him, blank and anxious, he set down his glass and sighed. ‘Let’s put it this way,’ he said. ‘It’s December. Nobody wants a survivor of child abuse for their Christmas party.’