It Ends At Midnight, page 5
‘Coming up for eleven,’ she said, her voice muffled by the loo door.
Not that late, then. Closing time wasn’t until midnight, and there was always Fingers to go to, or one of the late-night Italians further up town.
When I emerged from the loo, Stewart was waiting, tequila shots in hand. He made me lean my head back and licked my clavicle, pouring salt onto the wet patch. Then he put a chunk of lemon in my mouth, skin first against my tongue.
‘Stay still,’ he said. ‘Just wait.’
I waited, my neck starting to ache with the weight of my head, the spins beginning to return as all the Stella I’d drunk started to make a reappearance with the noise and fury of the pub. I tried to speak but I couldn’t, the lemon stuck still in my mouth. I rolled my eyes at him, urging him to get on with it, but he was shouting at one of his friends, almost as if he’d forgotten about me. After what felt like minutes, though it was probably only a few seconds, he turned his attention back to me.
‘Here we go,’ he said. He leaned forward and sucked at my neck, hard enough to leave a mark, before tipping the shot down his neck and biting the lemon from my lips. I was relieved to be able to bring my head back down, the room swimming. He waved another shot to me, pouring salt onto the back of his hand for me and holding the other piece of lemon suggestively in his mouth. I knew I’d had enough to drink. I knew I should stop.
‘I might not . . .’ I started to say but he held up the hand holding the shot, pushed it at me again, using the other to take the lemon out of his mouth so he could speak.
‘I got it for you especially,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a lightweight. I didn’t think you were like that.’
I sensed the challenge in his tone. Not like the other girls. I took the tequila from his hand and drank.
‘Any sign of Tess and Campbell?’ I said.
‘Fuck it, who needs them,’ Stewart said and pulled me to him, tongue in my mouth again. I thought about worrying, wondered about going home; it was still early enough, just, and I wasn’t that drunk, but then the tequila hit and I couldn’t deal with thinking about it any more.
It was cold and I didn’t have a proper coat so I clung onto Stewart all the way. I think he liked it, the way he kept hold of my shoulder, steering me along the pavement. There was an offie on the way and we went in, buying a bottle of the cheapest vodka, two packs of B&H. The man behind the till was about to take Stewart’s money when he appeared to think twice.
‘How old are you?’ he asked. ‘I want to see some ID.’
I froze immediately, splotches of guilt bleeding out on my cheeks. But he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at Stewart, and Stewart made a great show of pulling out a student card and showing it to the man, who gave it a cursory glance and nodded, ringing the purchase through.
‘Not her, though,’ he said. I jumped, sure he meant me, but when I looked up at him, he was pointing behind me, at Linda. I hadn’t even realised she was still there. ‘Too young,’ the man said with finality.
Stewart nodded, taking the bag of booze and fags from the man’s hand. ‘We’ll make sure she gets home all right. Thank you.’
As soon as we were outside he turned to Linda and hissed at her to fuck off. She looked defiant for all of about three seconds, maybe waiting to see if anyone else would stand up for her, but we all stayed silent, and in the end she turned tail. Stewart started kissing me and I couldn’t be sure but I might have heard a sob. It went out of my mind, though.
Next stop chips, from L’Alba D’Oro, salt and sauce, and a short cut through Scotland Yard adventure playground. We sat on the massive tyre swing, taking swigs of vodka and passing the bottle on. I was properly drunk by now, my words spaced and far away from each other. Tess kept coming into my head, leaving it again. It was all right, I was with Stewart. I hadn’t been told to fuck off like Linda, I was all right and we were spinning spinning spinning round on the tyre, heads back howling at the moon.
There might have been other people there with us by the time we got to Stewart’s brother’s flat, there might not, I was too drunk to tell. The chips had soaked up some of it, but I was topping up with swigs of vodka from the bottle and the world had contracted down to a small pinhole of light, Stewart’s face almost within focus in front of me. He was laughing and somehow we were in a bedroom, me pushed back onto something soft, him hard above me, pressing down.
He got up, saying something about a condom, and I was nodding, not sure what he meant, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me by The Cure playing loud in my ears, drowning out his words, and then as ‘Just Like Heaven’ started he was back, a rubbery smell on his hands, and I was pushed back again and this time he didn’t get off. I was there but not there, watching it happen from a corner of the room, my legs bent against his back, his shoulders tense as he held himself up above me, and then it was over, and I was sitting up looking at the inside of my thigh, a smear of blood all down it.
‘Did we have sex, then?’ I was saying and he was still laughing at me, catching me in a quick hug before getting up and throwing a towel to me from across the room.
‘Don’t make a mess on the sheets,’ he said. ‘My brother’ll kill me.’
I sat, dabbing at my legs with the towel, looking at the blood. I’d felt nothing. Or maybe I had, but the drink had carried the pain somewhere else. I guess I’d said yes. I hadn’t said no. It was time it happened, anyway. Next Stewart threw me my clothes and I pulled my pants back on, my bra, but suddenly I was tired, really tired, too much excitement for one evening. There’ll be tears before bedtime, those words my mother would say were running through my mind, and there was at least one tear, a drip of water unexpectedly from my right eye, snot trailing from my nose, and I wiped it clear with the back of my hand, sniffing loudly.
‘You OK?’ Stewart said, sitting down next to me, and this was almost too much now, a kindness from him I hadn’t anticipated.
‘I need to go home,’ I said. ‘But I’m too pissed.’
‘You can stay here,’ he said. ‘It’ll be OK. I can sleep in the other room.’
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ I said. I looked at him and we both started to laugh. Maybe not what I’d planned, what I’d even wanted, but he was being nice.
‘Are you my boyfriend, then?’ I said.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m your boyfriend.’ He was laughing at me but I didn’t mind. He lay down next to me and we turned off the light. This felt more intimate than what had happened before, his breath steady, his body warm. I stared at the ceiling, willing it to stop spinning but happy. This was going to change everything.
7
Marcus refuses to meet me immediately. He’s clearly pissed off that I haven’t been in touch with him since he left Tess. I don’t know what he expected, though. She’s always had my loyalty. He’s distant on the phone, elusive. I call repeatedly before he picks up and even when I say that Tess has asked me to contact him, he grunts, shuts the subject down.
‘I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,’ I say. ‘But there’s something I have to tell you.’
‘Of course there is,’ he says. ‘But it’ll have to wait. I’m up to my ears in a rape trial.’
‘When is it due to finish?’
‘Thursday for closing speeches. Don’t know how long the jury will take, of course. But I anticipate we’ll send them out on Thursday afternoon. I could meet you then.’
‘Do you really want to leave it that long? It’s important. I—’
He interrupts before I can say anything else. ‘You know what, Sylvie. Leave it. I’m happy right now. OK, I’m at a Premier Inn. But I’m not being endlessly criticised. I’m not being mocked, or got at for snoring. I’m not being yelled at, I’m not being ignored. I get to go to sleep, wake up, all without anyone undermining me or being nasty to me. I’m sleeping at night. Do you know how good that feels?’
‘But, Marcus—’
‘No, Sylvie. I don’t want to hear it. We can speak on Thursday. If you need any help with work before then, call me, but leave Tess out of it. I will deal with that once this trial is out of the way.’
He cuts off the call before I can say anything else. I’m surprised by the strength of his stance, but at the same time, part of me welcomes it. The thought of what I have to say hangs heavy on me – once he knows about Tess’s diagnosis, any peace he has will disappear. I send Tess a text to tell that I’ve made the arrangement and that I’m going to be tied up in work myself for the next couple of days. Maybe I’m being delusional, but my hope is that if I keep not mentioning Linda, she’ll forget about it. It’s not good for her to keep dwelling on the past like this.
Head firmly in sand, I spend the rest of the day working on my application letter, thinking about who the best referees will be. I’m junior to be applying to become a recorder, a barrister for only seventeen years, but maybe the last three years I’ve spent as a deputy district judge will be of assistance. The Youth Court trial is the first multi-day, multi-handed matter over which I’ll have presided, and my hope is that it will be sufficiently meaty that I’ll be able to use it to bolster my claim that I’m up to the task of being a Crown Court judge. Also, I know that one of the defendants is being represented by a heavyweight QC, who is in the same chambers as one of the members of the Judicial Appointments Commission. I know it shouldn’t work this way, but on the off chance he could put in a good word, I want to make sure it all goes properly.
Work engrosses me. I don’t want to think about any of it, the promises I’ve made. If I ignore them, they’ll go away. I push it all out of my mind, only distracted when I get to the section of the application that relates to disclosure of character, where I need to fill out any relevant matter that might suggest I’m not of good character.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, but my thoughts rush over twenty-five years back into the past; a beach, a fire. The screaming. The box of memory is tight shut, but Tess has shaken it up with one mention of Linda’s name. I can feel tremors from deep within, a seismic rumbling as they threaten to emerge. After a moment I get a grip, push the lid back down further. No good will come from there. I get back to the form, running through all my competencies in my mind. I’m not a child any more, a teenager desperate and hungry for love, for attention. I’ve got judgement, the ability to make hard decisions. Integrity.
Jumping to my feet, I stride to one side of the room, then the other. My agitation is growing, the past casting a dark shade. As the flames leapt from that bonfire, dancing into the night, my paranoia flickers up, sparks catching my skin. I take a deep breath, another, looking around the kitchen for something to ground me, anything to take me out from the past and back into now.
Five, four, three, two, one. Time to make my sensory lists, grounding me back in the present. Touch, taste, sight, sound. My breathing slows as I look round the room, take it all in.
Now smell. That’s easy. The rubbish is full, overflowing from the sides of the bin, a sweet acridity lying in the air. I lit a scented candle earlier, masking the reek until I could be arsed to empty the bin, and this overlays the rot, sweet and rose-like, almost convincing, but not quite, the artificiality suddenly nauseating me. A bitter gall rises into my mouth, the taste overwhelming me. I almost gag but instead go to the sink, rinsing my mouth out again and again until it’s clear, nothing left but the residue of the municipal water, a chemical tang to overcome the seven sets of kidneys, bladder, urethra through which allegedly all London’s water has passed.
Forget panic, I’m entirely in the moment now, again repelled by my lack of cleanliness, the state in which I’ve left the rubbish. I pull the bag out roughly from the bin, holding the plastic container down with one hand and tugging with the other. There’s resistance to start with but it comes free all of a sudden, and I stagger, hitting my arm against the cupboard so hard that I drop the bag, spilling the contents, the sludge of uneaten meals spread wide across the floor.
The enormity of it all floods over me again. Tess’s illness, Marcus. That whisper of a name: Linda. The ghosts of my past so rudely awakened. All the excitement I’ve felt about the next stage of my career now under threat. A sob rises in my throat, a second, and I’m crying now, snot and tears, the way I used to cry as a teenager, as a child, even, inconsolable. I rest my head against my knees, wiping the mucus down one side of my leg, my sobs growing in intensity.
It’s only when the doorbell has been rung for a third time that I register the noise, the shrill chime cutting through my self-indulgent wailing. I try and pull myself together but it’s gone so far now that I’m hiccupping with it all, my throat contracting as my breath catches. A fourth ring and I pull myself up to my feet, wiping my face on my sleeve, though it’s sodden already. A fifth ring, lasting ten seconds, twenty, and I yell out with irritation, ‘I’m coming!’, shuffling over to the door in the expectation of a parcel, a delivery for next door as usually happens.
I keep my head averted as I open the door, holding my hand out in the hope that I can minimise any eye contact, any human interaction, the slightest hint of someone asking if I’m all right likely to send me over the edge, and it’s only when it’s shouted that I realise a man is yelling my name.
‘Sylvie. Sylvie,’ he says.
I don’t want to look. My eyes are half-shut against the light, piggy from crying, the skin inflamed and tender. I blink, blink again.
‘Sylvie,’ he says once more, and I blink once more, recognising his face at last, and much as I don’t want to, much as I wish at this moment that I had poise, grace, a modicum even of dignity, I start to cry again, all the strain of the last day bursting out of me as I stumble forwards towards him.
‘Sylvie, what on earth is the matter with you?’ Gareth says, but he reaches out and catches me before I fall. He carries me through to the bedroom, placing me down gently on top of the duvet. ‘Are you all right?’
I think for a moment about telling him everything, all my fears, but the words won’t come. I’m so tired, so drained with the shock of Tess’s diagnosis, the ferocity of my hangover.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t expect to see you.’
‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ he says. ‘But by the state of you, I think it’s a good thing that I came. Now, why don’t you see if you can get some sleep and I’ll sort out some food?’ He pushes my hair back from my face, his touch still gentle, and I reach up and cover his hand with mine.
8
Gareth stays for the next few days, calming me with his solid presence. He makes soups, stews, food that’s easy to swallow, to digest. He doesn’t ask again what’s happened, seemingly happy just to be with me and to see that I’m slowly coming back to myself. I don’t have any court appearances due so I’m safe to hole up at home with him, shutting out the storm that’s about to break.
The hours pass slowly, punctuated only by meals and afternoon naps, Gareth holding me close as we curl up on the sofa together. The time passes only too fast, though, and soon enough he has to return home and I find myself with Marcus in a wine bar, the lull truly over. Where Gareth’s been the still point, Marcus is all movement, Brownian motion in corporeal form. I’m exhausted the moment I sit down opposite him.
‘So you thought you’d just ignore me, take her side?’
‘Come on, Marcus – that’s not fair.’
‘You’ve ignored all my messages.’
‘You didn’t send that many,’ I say. I need to calm down. The situation is too serious for this kind of tit for tat. ‘Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about, Marcus.’
‘I think you owe me an apology,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You’ve not always chosen her over me.’ I suppress the urge to slap him.
‘Things change,’ I say. Marcus looks away, his cheeks flushed, before glaring at me. I look at his cross expression, fighting the urge to wipe it off his face by yelling Tess has cancer at him. Restraint doesn’t come easy to me but I’m doing my best to exercise it. My irritation starts to fade as I look at him more closely. I haven’t seen him for the last couple of months, but now I realise how strained he was looking when I last saw him. He looks now as if years have dropped off him, his skin pink and smooth, his eyes less hooded, the crease between his brows less pronounced.
‘You’re looking well,’ I say, changing the subject, and he accepts the deflection.
‘I feel well,’ he says. ‘Like I said to you before, it’s like a weight’s been lifted off me. I should have done this years ago. I mean, look where we are. We haven’t done this for years, either.’ He gestures around him at the pub, the bottle of wine sitting between us, his packet of Marlboro Gold sticking half out of his jeans pocket. I nod my head at them.
‘Back on the tabs, then?’ I say, and he laughs.
‘Only for a while,’ he says. ‘It’s completely under control. Nice not to be lying about it, though. You know how much Tess hates smoking.’
I nod my head. I do know. I think of all the times she used to yell at me, at Marcus, telling us it was a filthy habit, that we’d get cancer and die and it would be all our own faults. The irony of it hits me hard as a brickbat and I swallow.
‘You OK?’ Marcus says. ‘You’ve gone very pale.’
‘I have to talk to you about something,’ I say. ‘Not my judicial application. It’s about Tess.’
‘If you’re going to try and talk me into going back to her, you’re on a hiding to nothing. We are done. Dead. It’s over.’
‘Marcus, stop.’
‘We’re like the proverbial parrot. It is not a live marriage; it is a dead one.’
‘Marcus,’ I say, louder, my hand held up, and this time he listens.
‘What? What’s so bloody important? She’s sorry? Is that it?’
‘We didn’t discuss whether she’s sorry or not. She was telling me something else entirely different. Marcus, she’s going to need us.’
‘Why is she going to need us? I’ve left, goddamn it.’
