by Lesley Kara
‘I … I don’t understand.’ My voice is so hoarse I barely recognize it. It hurts to speak. My neck feels tender, bruised. ‘Why aren’t you … why aren’t you as hungover as I am?’
Helen laughs through her nose. A mean, dismissive exhalation. ‘Because I have something called self-control. Because I’m not a pathetic excuse for a human being like you.’
‘Helen, you’re frightening me. What happened last night? Why did you let me drink so much?’
‘I didn’t have much choice,’ she says. ‘You’re quite something when you’re pissed, do you know that?’ She unfolds herself out of her chair. ‘That wine would have lasted me weeks if you hadn’t turned up and bullied me into opening it all.’ She laughs then. A horrible, sarcastic laugh. ‘I don’t think moderation management’s quite your thing, is it, Astrid?’
She walks towards the bureau and takes hold of a framed photograph sitting on the top. I’ve never seen it there before. Now she’s thrusting it in front of my face and I see that it’s a gap-toothed child, grinning from ear to ear. A little boy. But before I have a chance to ask her who it is she whips it away and returns to her chair. She holds the photo in her lap and gazes down at it, stroking the glass in the frame.
‘My darling boy,’ she says, her voice suddenly so low I have to strain my ears to hear it.
Then I see what it was she was holding just now and my gut heaves. It’s a woollen trapper hat draped over the arm of her chair. It looks exactly like the one Simon used to wear. Fear twists and coils in the pit of my stomach as the terrible truth dawns. The child in the photo is Simon. Oh God, I’ve been a fool.
Helen looks up slowly, her face a mask of hatred. ‘He came back to me. Did you know that? He was getting better. Until he met you again.’ She spits the words out. She’s done it on purpose. Helen made me start drinking. She saw how low I was, how close to the edge, and she seized the chance to get her revenge. To do to me what I did to Simon. All the things I’ve told her. She knows everything. Everything!
Gingerly, I reach for my stinking clothes. My hands are shaking so much I can barely get hold of them and lift them towards me. Helen is out of her chair in a flash, the photo falling to the floor in her haste to yank the clothes out of my hands. She kicks them across the room. Then she slaps me, hard, across the face. The force knocks me back on to the sofa and I cower into the cushions, my cheek burning from the sting, my head spinning from nausea and the strength of the blow. I’m pouring with sweat.
She picks up the photo and wanders over to the window with it, talking to me as if nothing has happened.
‘Whenever I think of him as a child, he’s always the age he is here, in this photo. Seven years old. A gangly little thing with a cheeky grin.’ Her voice is soft now, indulgent. ‘Reading his science books, asking impossible questions, making up silly jokes and giggling before he reached the punchline.’
She shakes her head. ‘He could have done anything, been anyone.’ The softness in her voice has gone. ‘That’s what hurts the most. The waste. The sheer waste of a life.’
I shift position on the sofa and another wave of nausea washes through me. If I can summon up the strength, maybe I can launch myself at my clothes, grab them and make a run for it. But just as I’m about to move she turns round again.
‘I hadn’t seen him for years. I’d had to distance myself, you see? I’d told him I couldn’t spend the rest of my life bailing him out, dreading every phone call, every knock on the door. I’d told him I only wanted to see him if he stopped drinking. For good. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was the only way.’
For a second I feel a pang of sympathy. This is what it must have been like for Mum. Oh, Mum. I’d give anything to be safe at home with you right now. Sitting in your cosy living room in front of the telly, cradling mugs of hot tea in our hands. All those mind-numbingly tedious moments I never truly appreciated but which right now seem like a blessing.
‘But after six months of silence I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to know how he was. Where he was. I was desperate. I contacted hospitals, the police, visited homeless shelters. He’d completely vanished, and it was all my fault. I was too strict with him, thought I could stop him drinking from sheer willpower alone.’
She clasps the photo to her chest and rocks in grief. I shuffle to the edge of the sofa. If I’m going to make a run for it, I need to do it now. While her defences are down. ‘So when he turned up on my doorstep one day, looking like the walking dead, I welcomed him back with open arms. My boy had come home to me at last. He needed me. And this time I’d see to it that he got better, once and for all. I’d never let him out of my sight again.’
She turns sharply and, in that instant, I know that it’s me she’s not going to let out of her sight now. She’s seen me looking at my clothes and she walks over to them, stands right next to them. There’s no way I’ll have the strength to overpower her, not in the state I’m in. She’s at least six feet tall. Of course! It was her I saw by the beach huts that time. I wasn’t hallucinating. She must have dressed herself up in Simon’s old things, been wearing his hat! Maybe I should forget my clothes and just make a run for it. My coat must be hanging up in the hall. I could grab it on the way out, or grab anything that’s hanging there. Just to cover myself up enough to get home and lock myself in the house. Phone Rosie for help.
Except I don’t have her number. I threw it away. All Rosie wanted to do was help me. She’s always been trying to help me, right from the start, and I was too stupid to listen. She’s never trusted Helen. Never.
Helen walks towards me, almost as if she knows what’s going through my mind. ‘He told me all about you. How the two of you lived.’
She leans forward and strikes the glass-topped coffee table with the flat of her hand so that the empty bottles crash down and roll on to the floor. My empty wine glass has fallen on to its side and cracked, a dribble of red wine seeping out like blood. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I dare to make a move she’ll strike me too. And harder than before.
Her eyes spark with hatred. ‘The last thing he needed was a girl like you. He needed his mother. He needed me. I brought him into this world and I was going to keep him in it, for as long as there was breath in my body.’
She takes a step closer. I flinch. Now she’s sitting on the coffee table right in front of me, so close our knees are almost touching. All I can think of is that cracked wine glass still lying on its side. I daren’t look at it again in case she sees me and reads my mind, but I know it’s there and that I’ll use it if I have to.
‘I contacted AA,’ she says. ‘They put me in touch with a local group. I went to one of their meetings and two of them came back with me to the house, spoke to Simon while he was still in bed. He was sick for weeks. I gave up my job and started doing freelance work, working from home as much as possible. I didn’t want to leave him too long on his own. I cooked him lovely meals and bought him books to read. I cut his hair, like I used to when he was little. Bought him new clothes. The stuff he’d brought with him was so disgusting I threw most of it away.
‘I kept some of it, though,’ she says. ‘His jacket and his hat. They’re all I have left of him now. I kept one of his T-shirts too, but it must have got mixed up with some bits and pieces I took to the charity shop.’
Her face hardens.
‘I took his phone away. Didn’t want all my good work to be undone, didn’t want him going back to you and sinking back into his old ways. It was me he really loved. He left you and came back to me. So much for all that garbage you told me the other night, about him hating me. He came back to me because he loved me and he knew I’d look after him.’
‘I’m sorry I said those things, Helen. I’m sure he didn’t mean them—’
‘Shut up, you little bitch. I’m sick of the shit that comes out of your mouth, do you hear me? I’ve had to steel myself to listen to it these last weeks.’
After what seems like an eternity s
he starts to speak again.
‘They talked to him for hours, those men from AA. They talked and he listened. When he was well enough he started going to meetings. I’d drive him there, wait in the car outside and drive him home afterwards. He was working the programme, doing it properly. Not like you and your half-hearted attempts. He knew it was his only chance. He understood.
‘His sponsor used to come to the house and I’d hear the things they used to say. I read the Big Book from cover to cover so I could help him, so I could bring him back from the hell he’d been in since meeting you.’
‘But Simon used to drink before he met me, he was—’
‘It was meeting you that sent him down the wrong path. My boy would never have mugged a defenceless young mother and left her to die. Not my boy. Not Simon.’
A cold sweat breaks out on my back. Left her to die? What’s she saying? What does she mean?
‘He tried to pull you off her, but you just kept tugging and tugging at her handbag. They thought she was just concussed when she fell, but she died a few days later from a torn blood vessel in the brain. That poor child of hers. That poor, poor child. All the lives you’ve destroyed.’
I stare at her in horror. ‘You’re wrong. She couldn’t have died. We’d have heard about it if she had. It would have been on the news.’
‘How would you know what was in the news and what wasn’t?’ Her spit flies through the air towards me. ‘You were out of your head. You’re a drunk, remember?’
It can’t be true. It can’t! She’s lying. She must be. And yet how would I have known what was on the news? I might have thought I was checking, but I’d have been pissed most of the time.
‘Simon knew, though. He knew what you’d done. That’s why he left you. And he was doing so well. Eight months he’d been sober. He was like a different man. The man he was always meant to be. But the stronger and healthier he became, the more arguments he started. Why didn’t I trust him? Why was I taking all his money? Why couldn’t I treat him like an adult? If I didn’t stop acting like a gaoler, he’d leave, he said. He’d find somewhere else to live.’
She leans towards me, and I shrink back into the cushions, my gut knotting with fear.
‘I couldn’t let that happen. Because I knew, I knew that as soon as he was on his own, he’d be back to his old ways. Maybe not straight away, but bit by bit. So I relented. If I wanted to keep him at home with me, I knew things had to change. I started taking less of his money, gave him more freedom. Gave him his phone back.’
She shakes her head and sneers. ‘I’d deleted your contact details, but I should have deleted hers as well. That lovestruck little fool he’d known at school.’
Laura. She must be talking about Laura.
‘He was always popular with the girls. Went out with loads of them.’ She sneers at me. ‘Far, far prettier than you. All through his secondary-school years, he kept Laura dangling on a piece of string. Sometimes he’d take pity on her and take her out. I never imagined for a minute that she’d be the one he rang after all that time, but then, maybe he knew she was the safest bet.’
She clenches her hands into fists on her thighs.
‘She came round to the house. I was furious, but what could I do? If I made a fuss, I knew he’d leave. So I kept quiet. I figured it was better him being friends with her than going back to you.’
My toes curl as she clenches and unclenches her fists, over and over again. If I could just reach that broken glass …
Helen’s voice drones on. ‘Little did I know what they were planning up there, the two of them. She was helping him pack his bag. The next thing I knew a taxi had arrived and they were piling his things into it and driving off.’
She leans in towards me, her voice scarily low. ‘You know the rest, of course. Within a few weeks they’d had a row and he’d hooked up with you again. Two weeks later he was dead.’
She squeezes her eyes shut and bites down on her bottom lip. Her body sways and for a second or two I think she’s on the verge of collapsing. Then she’s staring at me again, her face pinched with rage. ‘You saw to that, didn’t you?’
Something beeps from the windowsill. It sounds like the text-notification sound on my phone. Helen walks calmly across the room to pick it up.
‘I charged it up for you,’ she says, a faint smile twitching the corner of her mouth. ‘That’s probably Josh, thanking you for those lovely selfies you sent him.’
Now she’s openly smirking. ‘Quite the little sex kitten, aren’t you?’
46
‘What are you talking about?’
I lurch to my feet, trembling and weak. This can’t be happening. I don’t understand.
‘Get dressed, you pathetic creature.’
‘Give me my phone!’
‘Get dressed first.’
With shaking hands, I pick up my smelly clothes from the floor and struggle to get into my jeans. My legs are all sticky with sweat and the jeans are damp. I pull on my T-shirt, almost gagging at the smell of vomit that’s soaked into it.
Helen watches with disdain as I tug it down over my hips, trying to cover the horrible wet patch at the crotch. Her eyes travel slowly from my face to my feet and back up again.
‘At least he knows the real you at last,’ she says, and tosses the phone towards my face, forcing me to swerve sideways to stop it hitting me. It lands on the sofa and I grab hold of it, heart racing.
I’ve waited over two weeks to see Josh’s name flash up on my screen and now here it is. Four text notifications, and they’re all from him.
‘Stop sending me these,’ says the first one I read.
I close my eyes. Now I know what happened to that poor young woman, now I know for sure what kind of person I really am, a couple of inappropriate selfies are the least of my problems, but I have to know what I’ve done. See it with my own eyes. I go into my messages and there they are. I have no recollection of doing this. None whatsoever. I must have been out of my head.
Well, duh, Astrid. Of course you were out of your head. You’ve drunk so much you blacked out. Welcome back, loser.
They’re worse, far worse, than I could ever have imagined. Me sprawled on the sofa, bottle in hand, red-wine stains splattering my T-shirt, an inane grin plastered over my stupid face. Then a shot of my purple-stained teeth and my nostrils as I leer at the camera I’m holding too close. I look horrendous. Ugly. Revolting. And – oh no, please no – not this. Not this. I’ve actually hoicked up my T-shirt and pulled down the cups of my bra. And there’s vomit on my chin.
I force myself to look at them again. This is what happens when I drink. I’m embarrassing. Beyond embarrassing. I’m monstrous. I killed a woman. Left a child without a mother.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I read his replies.
‘I can’t believe you’re drinking again, not after everything you said in your letter.’
What’s he talking about? What letter?
I read the next one: ‘I thought we had something. I thought it would be okay. That sooner or later we’d get back together. But all the lies and the drama. These disgusting pictures. I don’t need this in my life. I don’t want it.’
His words claw at my heart, but the last one, the one that’s just arrived, is the worst of all. Just four blunt words: ‘Leave me alone, Astrid.’
Helen takes a step towards me.
‘I might have helped you take the photos, but you got yourself into that state all on your own.’
What does she mean, she helped me take them? Oh my God! She must have positioned herself somehow so it looked like it was me holding the phone.
Suddenly I’m reaching forward and snatching the stem of the cracked wine glass. I smash it into the table and run at her with it clenched in my fist, but somehow she manages to grab hold of my wrists and hold my hands up high.
She laughs in my face. ‘He won’t want anything to do with you now. A nice clean-living boy like Josh Carter. Not that he would have come back t
o you anyway. Over two weeks and not a single phone call. Not even a text. It’s hardly love, is it?
I ram my knee hard into her crotch, slam it up against her pubic bone. She lets go of my wrists and doubles up in pain. The broken glass falls to the floor and I push her to one side and run out into the hall. There’s no sign of my shoes – I’ll have to make my escape barefoot.
But before I can open the front door she’s back on her feet and pulling me down on to the floor, kneeling on my stomach. She’s got another wine bottle in her hand – an unopened one this time. She raises it aloft, a look of such hatred on her face that I know it’s only a matter of seconds before that bottle comes slamming down on my head.
‘All the deaths I had planned for you … What right have you to go on living, when my boy is dead? And that poor young mother too. I should have strangled you while I had the chance. I came so close. So bloody close. One more twist round your neck and you’d have gone.’
I think of those tights, draped over the table earlier. Oh God. I shut my eyes and brace myself. With Helen’s full weight kneeling on top of me I’m powerless to roll away.
‘Simon didn’t love you. He might have said he did, when he was drinking. But if he loved you so much, why did he leave you? Not once, but twice. He left you for good. For ever.’ Her face changes. ‘He chose death over you.’
I can barely breathe with her kneeling on my stomach, but somehow I manage to force the words out. ‘He chose death over you too.’
She starts to shake. At first I think it’s fury. Then I realize she’s crying, her whole body heaving with emotion.
‘He didn’t. He didn’t! You think you know everything, but you’re wrong! You’re wrong!’
She rocks back on her heels and hurls the bottle at the wall with all her strength. Shards of wet glass shower down over both of us.
I take my chance. I scrabble to my feet and wrench the front door open, launch myself down the stairwell without looking back. I’ve reached the bottom now and I catch sight of myself in the glass door. A bedraggled, filthy mess. I smell my sweat and the stench of stale booze and vomit wafting off me. I’ve got to get away from here, get myself cleaned up before Mum gets home. Or I’ll lose her as well as Josh. I’ll have nothing left. Nowhere to go.