Mirrorland, page 13
‘You fall in?’ Ross yells from what sounds like the bottom of the stairs.
‘I’ll be right there,’ I shout back.
I look down at my dress. Think of my irrational jealousy towards Shona. My wide, mocking smile – She’s not dead. Too bad for you. And then I start pulling the pins out of my hair, shaking it loose. I don’t need to be El to stop being me.
‘You okay?’ Ross says, when I go back into the drawing room.
‘I’m okay.’ I almost can’t bear to look at him, at his frown, his eyes, the flicker of firelight between us. So ridiculous to feel like this, to still feel like this.
He stands up. ‘Are you sure? You—’
‘Do you miss Mirrorland?’
He looks neither surprised nor pissed off at the question. Smiles all the way to his eyes. ‘I had the best times of my life there. I was sorry when it was gone.’
‘Have you been down there? After you bought the house?’
He nods. ‘It was pretty sad. The MacDonalds must have found the door in the pantry cupboard. They’d mostly cleared the alleyway up to the front garden, and pretty much left the washhouse to rot.’ He pauses. ‘I papered over the door; going down there upset El too much.’
I change tack, as much to banish the returned furrow between his brows as to avoid telling him that I pulled that paper down. ‘God, do you remember the Satisfaction’s raids on the Spanish Main?’
‘Much pillaging.’ His smile is so bittersweetly familiar. ‘That was my fault. I was a bit of a klepto.’
‘Your Treasure Trophies.’
‘Jesus, my Treasure Trophies. What a knob. You know, Mum found a whole load of the shit from our treasure chest in my wardrobe a few years after you’d gone. Including a complete set of Victorian sterling silver cutlery. Didn’t ask me a thing about them. Just charity-shopped the lot.’
I go towards him, and he stops smiling. His eyes widen as I get closer, and I take a breath, will myself to be brave, to keep going.
‘I miss us,’ I whisper.
‘Cat. What—’
I reach through the space between us, put my palms flat against his chest. ‘I miss us in Mirrorland the most.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t want to talk any more,’ I say. When I stroke my fingers along his neck and jawline, they don’t hesitate, don’t shake.
He freezes, takes hold of them, backs away. ‘No. We can’t do this.’
There’s a darkness around us, and I can feel it close in. The fire crackles. I can hear the grandfather clock tick, tick, ticking in the shadow of the hallway. And all around us the house groans and breathes and laughs.
I push myself hard against him, and even though I don’t say it, I know it’s in my eyes. She isn’t dead. She just left you. Like she left me. I kiss his cheek, his jaw, his lips, run my tongue against the salt skin of his throat. I want him to give in. I want him to beg. I’ve always wanted him to beg.
But instead, he pushes me away again. Closes his eyes. Steps back.
I think of that look of horror, how quickly he scrambled to get away from me in this very room three nights ago. I hear the heavy turn and clunk of a deadlock. The thunderous stamp of boots. Something’s coming. Something’s nearly here. And then I do start to shake. I put my hands on his face, his chest, smooth my palms over his shoulder blades, run my fingers through his hair.
‘Cat, you have to stop,’ he says. But whether he knows it or not, he’s already touching me; his fingers are gripping hold of my arms, keeping me where I already want to be. Already am. ‘Please.’
I move my fingers down, down. Feel his hot fast breath, the glancing edge of his teeth against my neck as I press the heel of my palm against his crotch. His voice muffled against my skin. ‘God. Please. Please, Cat.’
And as soon as I kiss him again, he gives in. The kiss is too wet, too hot, too clumsy, but it’s what I need. Everything feels so raw, it almost hurts. We grab handfuls of each other, and it’s just the same as it ever was. The same wonderful. The same rush. The same madness. He makes a sound, loud and almost distressed, and I think, Yes. Yes.
I suppose what we’re doing is punishing El again, the only way we know how. But God, it doesn’t feel that way. We stagger backwards. He kisses me like he doesn’t need to breathe, and I kiss him back, and all of it – the noises we’re making, the frenzied near panic of what we’re doing: scratching, pinching, squeezing, biting – all of it feels good and clean and right in a way that nothing – and no one – else ever has. I lost my virginity to him in much the same way: pressed up against a chest of drawers in his bedroom; too fast, too desperate, the pain needy and raw, a spur to do more, feel more, take more. It was never ever enough.
He lifts me up onto the mahogany lowboy; its French polish is cold against my skin. We fumble with each other’s clothes, making frustratingly little headway. He pulls me closer, presses himself harder against me, bites the space between my left shoulder and neck hard enough to make me cry out, to grab him back even harder. Every bit of me wants him, there is not an ounce of doubt or guilt in me. I think of El’s Sometimes I wish she would just disappear. And how right now, right here, I’m not just glad that she has, I’m certain that all along she was the one that was supposed to.
When we finally manage to get rid of enough clothes that he can push against me, inside me, skin to skin, we both cry out, we both hold on, we both whisper ‘Fuck’ into each other’s mouth. And I stop thinking about El at all.
*
There was never a time when Mirrorland didn’t feel real; when we couldn’t feel the wind and rain and wonder of it, or smell the sea and smoke and sweat and blood of it. But sometimes, Mirrorland felt very real, and those were the times when we were clever or cruel or afraid.
One long hot Saturday afternoon, when the Satisfaction was between ports, El and I devised a game to pass the time. Ross would be put overboard into the open sea, and handfuls of sharp tacks would be thrown in with him. He’d have ten minutes to find and return every single one before we hauled anchor and left. He was reluctant, of course, but all Mirrorland rules set by either El or me had to be obeyed. And so he stood in the Caribbean Sea, some three hundred miles off the coast of Haiti, shoulders hunched and pretending not to flinch as we threw the tacks in after him.
He had to have known he couldn’t do it. That the game was supposed to be impossible. But still, he tried. He got down on his hands and knees and searched every corner of the sea for those scattered tacks, collecting them in one hand, picking them up with the other – and only when there was one minute remaining did he start to panic.
‘I can’t do it! I don’t have them all!’
‘There are fifty,’ El said mildly. ‘How many do you have?’
‘We’ll stop the clock,’ I said. ‘While you count.’
He had thirty-two.
‘You better hurry up,’ El said.
When his time was up, and we got ready to sail away without him, he started to cry. ‘Don’t! Please!’
I’d never seen Ross cry before, and seeing it didn’t make me feel remorse, it made me feel powerful. It made me think of hiding in a box and sobbing into a tartan blanket.
‘You can catch us up, stupid,’ El said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘NO! You can’t leave me!’
That image is one of my most enduring of Mirrorland. El and I sailing away from a sobbing and inconsolable Ross on his knees in the Caribbean Sea, hands bloody and full of tacks. Calling out to us though we pretended not to hear him. ‘How will I know where you’ve gone?’
The alarm clock says 11:35. When I stretch, everything aches in a warm, lethargic way. Ross is still in bed with me. I can hear his slow breathing, feel the heat of him at my back. When I’m sure that he’s still asleep, I turn around to look at him. He’s lying half on his front, legs splayed under the covers. I’ve never gone to sleep with him before, and it feels strange, intimate, more of a transgression than fucking him did. At least we’re in the Clown Café instead of their bedroom, our bedroom. I look at his thick hair, sticking up in all directions. His broad shoulders and back, his narrow hips, the curve and flat of his flank. And I still want to touch him, I still feel that itchy need to do more. I think the word arsehole, but it’s lost much of its previous power. I do have guilt, and a sizeable chunk of it, but when I poke around it, like the swollen gum around a bad tooth, it gets no bigger, no more painful.
She left him. She doesn’t want him.
‘Hey.’ His voice is muffled, still thick with sleep.
I snatch my hand back from his skin, but otherwise freeze, holding my breath.
He doesn’t turn around, but gropes behind him for my hand. And for a horrible, punishing moment, I wonder if he thinks I’m El.
‘I know it’s you, Cat.’
I sit up. Find myself looking at that framed photo on the bedside table. A young El and Ross grin back at me.
‘Do you regret it?’ I hate that my voice sounds so small. ‘Do you regret what we did?’
He sighs, and then sits up too, turns his head to look at me. ‘No.’
But I realise that he’s looking at that framed photo too. And I can see in his eyes that part of him does. Part of him has to. A big part.
‘I don’t want you to think that I don’t love her,’ he says.
‘I’m her sister’ is just about the only thing I can think of to say. As far as culpability goes, genes probably trump vows.
We both jump at the sudden bell ring from downstairs, its echo winding up towards us. Ross gets up, pulls on a pair of jogging bottoms. I hear him move across the landing, the slap of his bare feet against the mosaic stair tiles. I stare at the bell pull set into the wall next to the dress-up cupboard. Think of all those bells lined up on the board in the kitchen like mismatched knives in a drawer.
I look back at the photo. And I can still hear her voice in the dark. After hours and hours of ugly silence. Hoarse and mean and full of the same gleaming fear as her eyes on the day she gave me the Black Spot. How could you? You’re supposed to be my fucking sister.
*
By 2005, El and I had a bedsit in Gorgie. A predictably awful dump, though we were as grateful for it as shipwrecked sailors are for land. It belonged to the Rosemount, and was ours for exactly twelve months, while we sought alternative accommodation and the means to pay for it. We were both at college on bursaries, working whatever shitty jobs we could find. We still barely spoke, no closer at almost nineteen than we had been at almost eighteen. And I was still lying to her.
The care home was holding a reunion party that May Day bank holiday: a barbecue in its extensive grounds. El threw the invitation in the bin, but I rescued it, arranged to meet Ross at the rear fire exit. We probably thought we were being discreet and clever, but I doubt we actually were for even a minute. Ordinarily, we met at his mother’s house – they’d moved from Westeryk to Fountainbridge by then – and we’d have fast and muffled sex in his small single bed, listening to the murmur of people downstairs. The opportunity that an empty Rosemount presented was too good to waste.
The long, high-ceilinged corridors were deserted. Ross held my hand as he led me along them, while I navigated from the rear in loud whispers. All the room keys hung on numbered hooks in the reception office, and I knew that the new occupants of the twin bedroom that El and I had shared were busy getting stoned behind a bush on the front lawn. But that probably wasn’t all of it. I imagine that I wanted Ross there. To have him in my bed and not hers.
We had progressed past the urgent, desperate stage to slick and sweaty and loud, far beyond any shyness or inhibition, when she walked in on us. I saw her over Ross’s shoulder in the very instant that he came, twitching and shuddering against me, moaning my name.
I froze, a twin statue of El, and a shame more potent, more powerful than even the love I felt for Ross grabbed hold of me, choked my breath.
Ross caught on soon enough. Pulled out and away from me, swaddling us both in blankets, his eyes close enough to mine that I could see my own reflection. He closed them before he turned slowly around.
‘El,’ he said. ‘El.’
She stared at us, all life, all colour gone from her face, leaving only grey and slack horror. And my lips formed her name without letting out a sound.
‘There was no one there,’ Ross says now, when he comes back. He stands by the bed, awkward, reluctant, and I can’t think of anything to say to make him stay. Finally, he looks at me. His smile is flat, unhappy. He turns his back, sits on the edge of the bed, bows his head.
‘I wish we’d never come back here. I fucking hate this place.’
I don’t say anything. Maybe if they’d never come back here, I wouldn’t be here either.
‘El was having an affair,’ he says, to the stripes on the wall. ‘I think she was having an affair.’
‘Why?’ There are twin blurry pulses of pain inside my temples.
‘I lied about us being okay. We weren’t getting on. We were barely speaking. For a long time.’ He shrugs his shoulders. ‘She had another phone.’
And I can’t help it. I think of those two words. Capitalised in a subject heading. Splashed bloody across the naked stone wall alongside the washhouse. HE KNOWS. I press my fingers against my temples.
‘Did you know who it was?’
Ross shrugs. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. There was this guy she sometimes talked about. Another artist. And I could just tell, you know? I mentioned him to Rafiq, but El never told me his name.’ He shakes his head. ‘Big red flag, right?’
When he finally turns around, his eyes aren’t furious like I expected, but weary. ‘No doubt he was sensitive, patient. Listened endlessly to all of her problems.’ He tries to shrug his shoulders again, but they look too heavy. ‘Nice with a capital N. You know the fucking type.’
I do.
But instead of telling him about Vik, I think about the mother who stole Ross from his father. I think of him bloody and sobbing, on his knees in the Caribbean Sea, watching us sail away. The sound he made the night I kissed him: low and keening, trapped like a howling wind inside a narrow space. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to go on without her.
And I crawl towards him, wrap my arms around his torso, and lay my cheek against his back, feel the slow, steady thump of his heart against his ribs. Reach my fingers inside his jogging bottoms, hear the sharp inhale of his breath as I close them around him, already hard.
She left him. She doesn’t want him any more. She took him from me.
It takes a long time, long enough that he starts to beg again, but I want so badly to keep him close, to keep him on the brink of still wanting me, still needing me, that I ignore his pleas until the very end.
And when it’s over, I press my face against his skin and close my eyes.
‘Don’t regret this, Ross,’ I whisper to his heartbeat. ‘I won’t let you.’
CHAPTER 13
I always used to watch the news and wonder how people could carry on with their lives when they were stuck in limbo, but the answer now is obvious. It’s just easier. Easier than giving up. Easier than stopping. Easier to just pretend that all is okay. Until it is.
The morning is cold, the sunlight through Colquhoun’s of Westeryk’s big windows blinding. I don’t really want to go in, but we’ve completely run out of food, and Ross is still lying in my bed, his face relaxed in sleep. It’s been two days. And three nights. And already, I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like to be anywhere else but with him.
I hesitate at the shop’s door, my palm against its glass. Whenever I go out alone, the feeling – the physical sensation – of being watched is now so pervasive, so expected, that it almost feels normal. I allow myself one look: up and down the empty street from the Links to the corner of Lochend Road, and then I turn around, push through the door.
My heart sinks when I realise Anna is the only cashier. I shop slowly, filling a basket with as much as I can possibly carry. When I finally have to approach the till, I see that Anna’s expression is just as wary. I set down my basket, and she clears her throat, makes an obvious effort to meet my gaze. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say.
She clears her throat again. ‘I’ve wanted to say I’m very sorry for what I said to you last week. I was upset about El, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. It wasn’t fair.’
‘Thank you,’ I say, even though I sense she doesn’t completely mean it.
She sighs. ‘I was angry with you because she was alone. Because you weren’t here when she needed you. And now … now that she’s …’ She shakes her head violently. ‘… Gone. Here you are.’
I bite down on my tongue, and it hurts. But I won’t speak. I won’t protest my innocence and El’s guilt. It never does any good.
Anna doesn’t say anything more until I’m handing over my money, and then she reaches out to close cool fingers around my wrist.
‘El had them too.’
‘What?’ I try to pull out of her grip, but it’s surprisingly strong.
A nod to my arm and outstretched hand. The bruise is already a couple of days old and doesn’t hurt at all, but it makes me think about the tiny chains of finger bruises all along my forearms; makes me flush when I remember how I got them. Pushed up against the Smeg fridge-freezer, Ross’s breath moving hot along the inside of my thigh as he pinned my arms behind me: Don’t move, don’t move.
‘Let go of me,’ I say, in a voice so cold I’m nearly impressed with myself.
But she doesn’t. Instead she tightens her fingers, pulls me closer. Her expression softens, becomes almost beseeching. ‘I meant it when I said she wouldn’t want you to be here, Cat. You should go.’
