It Ends At Midnight, page 20
I guess I’ve had it coming, but this is not how I expected it to catch me, a smutty pic in the inbox of a snot-nosed kid. Someone is setting me up and I’ve no idea how, or who. I need to fight but I’m tired now, so fucking tired. I lie down on my sofa, the stale smell comforting. Cursing myself for the fact that I put my blanket in the wash earlier, I get my coat and roll myself up in it, willing myself to sleep, desperate for oblivion.
I can’t sleep, though. There’s too much buzzing in my head and besides, it’s too early. I’m being stupid. I sit up, pace round the living room, repositioning the ornaments, the books. Then I go to make a coffee. Perhaps the caffeine will cut through the fug in my head. I go through to the kitchen, to see a piece of paper on the side.
Gareth. At last. He hasn’t just cleared out and left me. Gone to your friend Tess’s house for the party food tasting. Call me.
At least I saved his number on my new phone. There’s nothing else for it. Much as I’d like to lock myself in my flat and never leave, I know I can’t do that. I put my coat on. This is one time that I know I need the support of friends. The thought of Gareth, Tess and Marcus together gives me hope, a glow of warmth that they’ll help me, they’ll stand with me as I face this trial. Suddenly my steps lighten and I’m practically running as I go onto the street, hailing the first cab I see.
SPRING TERM
March 1990
A different night, back at Stewart’s brother’s flat. We went through into the living room, still as grotty as it had been at New Year, the Stone Roses still playing in the background. The coffee table in the middle of the room was stained with wine and beer, concentric circles of grime all overlapping like a Venn diagram of the night, here the juxtaposition of tequila and red wine that made me so sick. Stewart slammed down a six-pack of Tennent’s and Tess pulled a half of vodka out of her pocket.
Campbell knelt down at the table and pushed the cans aside before taking a small paper wrap out of his pocket. He shook out the contents onto the table, a small pile of white powder.
‘Gies a card,’ he said, and without saying anything, Stewart pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and gave it to him.
‘Blockbusters,’ Campbell said, turning the card over in his hand. ‘Classy.’
Stewart shrugged.
‘And a note.’
Again, Stewart rummaged in his wallet and came up with a grubby fiver. He rolled it into a tight cylinder and held it while Campbell divided the powder into fat lines, four of them. One for each of us. As the preparations took shape I felt more and more twitchy, nerves even more exposed.
Tess leaned forward. ‘You’d best give Sylvie a smaller one,’ she said. ‘She’s not done it before.’
‘And you have?’ I said, outraged at this insult to my dignity.
‘I know what I can handle, Sylvie,’ she said. ‘Unlike you.’
I snarled under my breath. Secretly I felt a little relieved as I watched Campbell take some off one of the lines and divvy it up between the others, but I wasn’t going to show it. I just hoped to fuck I wasn’t going to be asked to go first. I might have seen Goodfellas recently, but I wasn’t totally confident about what I was meant to do, how I was meant to inhale the drug. Ian Brown wanted to be adored, crooning from the speakers. I just didn’t want to make a complete twat of myself.
‘Is this coke, then?’ Stewart said. ‘Thought you said you hadn’t been able to get hold of any.’
‘Nah, it’s speed,’ Campbell said. ‘But let’s not spoil the illusion.’ He bent his head and snorted a line so quickly that I didn’t have time to see how he did it.
‘Dirty drug,’ Stewart said, and they laughed.
Tess tucked her hair back behind her ears before leaning forward, careful not to dislodge the lines that remained on the table. I gazed intently as she pressed one nostril in, held the note to the other, snorted up the drug, wiping white residue away from her nose with the back of her hand before handing the note on to Stewart. He had his, and now everyone was finished, looking at me. I shivered, unable to control the movement, feeling suddenly like a slab of meat in the middle of a skulk of jackals, slaver dripping from their jaws, red glinting from their eyes.
Stewart gave me the rolled-up money and I nearly flinched as the soggy end of it touched my hand. I didn’t want to think about all the noses it had been up, or the gunk it had hoovered up from the table along with the drugs. My skin started to crawl at the thought, the millions of bacteria, the spores of mould that would be growing microscopically on the stains on the table. Horror at the thought of it held me rigid, even as Tess started to jeer at me for my cowardice. She took the lid off the bottle of vodka and drank a draft straight from it, unable to control a sharp intake of breath at the end, a puckering of her mouth.
The spell holding me in place broke. I could wash away any germs with the vodka, I thought, and bent down to take the speed, surprising myself with the efficiency with which I cleaned it off the table and up my nose. The chemical hit the back of my throat with bitter force. I sat back and took the vodka from Tess, taking a gulp and washing it round my mouth before swallowing it. I don’t know what I’d expected, an immediate transformation, like Popeye after eating a tin of spinach, but there was nothing, no great revelation, no moment of epiphany.
Images were moving on the television, shifting forms, no soundtrack. I wasn’t looking closely at it, but Tess cried out in surprise. ‘It’s porn,’ she said, and started to laugh, more nerves than mirth judging by its high-pitched sound. I looked more closely and yes, it was porn, a naked girl on all fours in between two men who seemed much older than her, one taking her from behind, the other with his cock in her mouth. I shivered again, but the boys laughed, an avidity to their gaze, like the way that they’d looked at me earlier, slaver back dripping down their maws.
Stewart was gurning, his jaw moving rhythmically in time to the music, and suddenly he leapt to his feet and pulled me up too, grinding himself against me, hard against my thigh. I was getting off on the music too, the rushing feeling that was building in my head, sweat starting to prickle at my temples. I let go of him to scratch at my face, my arm, the rushing happening all over my skin now.
Campbell was grinding up against me from behind now, and Stewart laughed as if he were welcoming him in, but I saw Tess’s face over his shoulder and I pulled myself away. Stewart took me back firmly into his arms and started kissing me. Even though normally I preferred it if we were alone, wanting to avoid any PDAs, I didn’t mind right now. If anything, I was into it, kissing him back with more enthusiasm than normal. My eyes were tight shut but I opened them after a moment to see that Campbell was sitting on the sofa next to Tess, his hand down her top, her tongue in his ear, but it was me he was looking at, and it was for him that I started to perform, bringing myself round to face Campbell while grinding my arse into Stewart.
He bit at my neck for a while, but then muttered in my ear, ‘I want to fuck your brains out,’ and I laughed yes yes yes. He led me by the hand out of the room, all the time my eyes on Campbell as he watched me leave, and then we were back in the bedroom, the room I knew so well. We were kissing still and he was pushing me back on the bed and I was in it completely, until an image of Linda came into my mind, her kissing him, her lying back on this very bed with him. Her falling unconscious and him continuing to have his way with her. I pushed him off and sat up.
‘What?’ Stewart said and pulled at me, so I stood up and walked over to the door.
‘Why did you do it, Stewart? Why did you get off with Linda at Hogmanay? She told me that you brought her back here.’
He groaned in response. ‘It was her suggestion,’ he said. ‘She was the one who wanted to come back here. I was so out of it I didn’t really have any idea what was going on.’
‘That’s what she said, too. That she was out of it.’
‘There you go. Maybe we were both out of it. Maybe it got out of control. It shouldn’t have happened. If you’d just stuck with me instead of getting off with all those blokes, none of it would have happened.’
It was your idea nearly burst from my lips, but now I wasn’t sure what had happened. Whether it even mattered. I looked at him and his words from earlier reverberated in my head, I want to fuck your brains out and actually, that was what I wanted too. The effect of the speed was rushing through my blood and I definitely wanted it right here, right now. He held his hand out to me and I took it, sitting back down beside him before he pulled my top off over my head and undid my bra.
After a while he rolled over and fumbled through his jeans which were on the floor.
‘Just getting a condom,’ he said. I didn’t bother to reply, listening to the music thumping from outside the room, wondering what Campbell and Tess were doing, whether they were fucking on the sofa.
‘Get on top,’ Stewart said, and I pulled off the rest of my tights. Normally I would have shied away from it, too self-conscious about how to move, how fast, but now I didn’t give a shit, I was guns blazing ready to ride. He took hold of my waist and thrust up once, twice. I tried to get a rhythm going but he wouldn’t let go, driving up into me at his own pace. I started to get into it, welcoming the length of him as he withdrew fully then thrust up again. He shifted me slightly then once more drove up but this time it wasn’t pleasure, it was a sharp, intense pain of a kind I’d never felt before. I jumped up, breaking away from his grip, and realised then what had happened.
‘You just fucked me up the arse,’ I said. ‘You just fucked me up the arse.’ The pain was still intense and I curled my knees up against my chest and held them close as I pushed myself up into the far corner of the bed.
‘Sorry,’ he said, but he didn’t sound sorry. He didn’t look sorry, either, a smirk lifting the corners of his mouth as his jaw continued to contract.
‘We should have talked about it first,’ I said.
‘I thought you were more fun,’ he said. ‘Up for anything. Didn’t take you for the frigid type.’
‘Not up for that. Do you want to ram something up your arse?’
He squirmed. ‘That’s different.’
‘It’s not different at all.’ I looked over at him, but he was smirking while I was still in pain. ‘Why didn’t you ask me first?’
He shrugged. ‘It was an accident.’
I climbed out of bed and dressed, my fingers clumsy as I rushed to cover myself. All I wanted was to get out of there, away from Stewart’s mocking face, and the grunting I could now hear from the living room as the music stopped. I slammed out of the bedroom without buttoning my shirt, my bra exposed, and stopped short as I saw Campbell fucking Tess from behind on the sofa, just like in the video. I stifled a sob.
I couldn’t stay here any more. Not like this. I turned and looked at Tess, one last look, checking whether she was OK, if she had registered my distress. She showed no sign of it, her eyes looking straight in front of her, no immediate flicker of awareness that I was there, though after a few seconds she seemed to register my presence. I wanted to ask her for help, tell her what had happened, but Campbell was still going at her from behind, and as I watched, Stewart emerged naked from the bedroom, erect cock in hand, and walked to where her head was, taking hold of her jaw as if in question, and she opened her mouth to let him in.
Shame washed over me. I’d passed myself off as a party girl, but I’d fallen short. Stewart would be telling everyone on Monday what a prude I was. I watched Tess some more, acquiescing to their treatment of her, desperate as ever to please. To show how much more fun she was than me. Sure, they’d say she was a goer, but Tess didn’t care. All she wanted was to be wanted. It didn’t matter what the consequences might be.
As I stood, transfixed, Campbell pulled away from her. She pushed at Stewart as if to say she was done, rolling over onto her side in a foetal position on the sofa, her back to me. I stood for a moment more, waiting for her to get up, come over to me, but she lay motionless.
I couldn’t stifle the sobs any more. I’d watched my best friend sucking off the bloke who’d just hurt me, who’d done something horrifically intimate without permission, without even warning, and I turned and ran, through the dark streets, past the pubs that were still open, still thumping with music, until I got to my front door and, realising I didn’t have my key, rang on the doorbell for one long ring after another, no longer caring now what my parents saw or thought might have happened to me, so desperate was I to have a long, hot bath and hide in my bed until the end of time.
THE WAITRESS
Shittest party I’ve ever worked at, that’s what I tell the police. No atmosphere to speak of, not many people. For the size of the house, I’d have expected at least a hundred guests. There were less than thirty people there.
Also, a renewal of vows? I mean obviously I’m not the demographic, but I’ve only ever known one other person do that, my auntie’s sister-in-law, and that was because she’d had an affair. Just looked weird, this woman in a tunic with long hair muttering over them in that big room upstairs.
Still, not my business what people do. A job’s a job. I was getting the food ready downstairs, all the last bits of prep as the boss – Gareth – told me. Putting canapés together, garnishing salad, polishing glasses. That kind of thing. Once they’d finished the ceremony I had to go round with drinks, then canapés, then get them downstairs for the buffet proper before taking them back up for the dancing later.
Dancing, I call it. I mean someone put an eighties selection on through Spotify and some of them danced like they’d never done it before. Even more embarrassing than my dad. Which is saying something.
Did I notice any atmosphere between any of the guests? Not really. I mean, the woman who was in the bridesmaid’s dress didn’t seem very happy, but she cheered up later. She was drinking, but she wasn’t the drunkest by a long shot.
Gareth told me beforehand that the bride was ill – he said that was why they were doing this. All I can say is that she didn’t look ill to me. She looked lovely, beautiful dress and great skin. I guess you can’t tell, can you? Her husband was being so sweet to her, always making sure that she had what she wanted.
I was one of the last to leave. Everyone went pretty early – there were a few old people who got out of there around eleven, and the rest went up town for the Hogmanay festival. They were mostly staying in hotels further along Princes Street. I didn’t see Gareth or his girlfriend – or the bride and groom (well, you know what I mean) – before I left. I thought they might have gone upstairs. Gareth had told me I could leave at 11.45 p.m. and that’s when I got out.
It was a shit party, but it’s sad it ended this way. They were far too drunk to be going up on the roof. It’s horrible, but it doesn’t surprise me that there was an accident. Just what I would have predicted.
30
I stand at the front door ringing and ringing on the bell. It normally takes them a minute to answer but this wait stretches out for what feels like hours. I can imagine them there, checking the CCTV at the front door, discussing whether they should let me in. Gareth will have told them everything by now. Not that they wouldn’t know anyway – the news will have spread around every barrister in London already. Marcus will be abreast of every single detail.
‘Sylvie, I’m coming,’ I hear Marcus calling from behind the door, and he opens it. He doesn’t reach to embrace me nor I him. We face each other for a moment before he bows his head, standing back to let me in. I go through to the kitchen without waiting for him to show me in. I see Gareth standing by the stove, Tess sitting on a stool on the other side of the island. My mouth tightens.
‘This is cosy,’ I say, before stopping myself. I know what I want to say, a rant that says I’ve been fighting for my life in that police station while you’re stuffing yourself with food don’t let ME disturb you before turning on my heel and striding out. I restrain myself.
‘Sylvie, come on,’ Gareth says. ‘You knew I was doing the tastings today. These are your friends. You asked me to help.’
I glare, but I don’t reply to him. I look over at Tess instead. ‘I might have known you’d go ahead with it, hell or high water. This vow renewal is the only thing that matters to you.’
She blinks. ‘Well, not quite the only thing,’ she says quietly. I hear her, though. Her words fight their way into my head, followed by the emotions they provoke. Chagrin. Concern. Guilt. It’s the guilt that wins out. I swoop down beside her, take her hand.
‘I’m sorry, Tess. I’m really sorry. I know how much you have to deal with. I’m just scared, that’s all.’
‘You don’t think I’m scared?’
I watch it play out across Tess’s face, the comparative losses that we fear. Me, my career. My name. Tess? Well, let’s just say it’s existential. I know that’s the case. Rationally, at least. Though the loss of everything I’ve worked for feels close to death for me. I catch sight of myself reflected in the mirror on the wall. I’ve never looked so old, so tired. Grey skin, greying hair, clothes flapping loose against me. Despite everything, Tess looks glowing with health. I look like the one with cancer.
‘Are you doing OK?’ I say, going over to sit beside Tess. ‘That was scary to watch before, when you had that . . .’ The word won’t come out.
‘Seizure?’ she says briskly. ‘Fine. I told you what the oncologist said.’
‘I’m scared about all that, too,’ I say. ‘You’re my best friend.’
‘Look, Sylvie,’ she says. ‘I think you should go home and have a nice bath and an early night. You’re in shock from everything that’s happened today. I think you just need to get some rest.’
