Alice and the Fly (20 page)

TM: And did things improve?

DH: They seemed to. I don’t know if it was the pills or the fact he was apart from Sarah, but he had fewer and fewer episodes. He’d talk about ‘them’ less. For years he was fine. Until he was about eleven.

TM: Then what happened?

DH: That was when my mother … she had a breakdown. It was after Herb died, she never really recovered from that. She got even more religious. We sometimes thought maybe she was … well, you know. If Greg is then there’s no reason she couldn’t be as well. They say it runs in families. And she was always big into church. That’s a part of it, I think, the religion. Believing all that stuff, believing in imaginary people, right? Anyway, she got Greg’s condition and her own all jumbled. She was trying to help him but she was making it worse, going on about ‘them’ all the time, taping up all the cracks in the house.

TM: The parcel tape?

DH: That was her, got him doing that. We had to step in eventually. She was … we had to have her put in a home. Greg had to come back to the family.

TM: And how was he?

DH: Good. Well, as good as he ever was. He was still very quiet, but he was fine with Sarah. He rarely had any fits or anything, just the occasional episode. Maybe like once a year or something.

TM: You didn’t know it had come back then, recently? That he was having problems again?

DH: No. I mean, there was an incident, a few weeks ago. He was sick in the house, at a dinner party. But I thought that was just one of these stand-alone episodes. I didn’t know it meant anything. I didn’t know he was going to do anything … like this.

[Pause.]

[DH starts crying.]

TM: We can have a break if you want.

DH: If I’d known, I would have done something. I would have.

TM: Do you need a minute?

DH: I’ll be OK. I just … I’ll be OK.

[Pause.]

TM: It’s not your fault.

DH: Yes, I think I’d like a minute, actually.

TM: OK.

DH: Just a minute. I’ll be fine in a minute.

OK, so I’m just going to try to be honest here. A lot has happened and I want to get it all down and the only way I can think of is just to write it, as best as I can remember. I have to ignore the cold and the tiredness and the pain in my palm and just write.

So here goes.

I opened my window. That’s how it started, for me, New Year’s Eve. The end-of-year celebrations. I retrieved the key from my
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
video-case and opened my fire-escape window. It was hard, after all that time locked up. Stiff. It made this sort of sucking sound, the rubber inlay peeling from the plastic.

I sat out on the roof. The air was icy so I balled into my warm-position. I smoked. I thought I’d better practise for the party. I didn’t want to cough all over you like last time. I’d managed to buy some beers, too, from Waitrose, so I practised drinking a few of them. Sarah and Mum were getting ready in their rooms. My father was locked away in his study. And there I was, sitting on the rooftop, sipping a Bud and watching the stars.

After a while I felt tired. I was worried I’d fall asleep, slip and fall down into the garden, so I climbed back inside and lay on my bed.

By the time I woke everyone had left: my parents had gone to the Hamptons’, my sister gone off with the Vultures from her year. The room was icy from having left the window open. I had a headache. I huddled under the sheets for an hour, forced down another beer. I tried not to think of the night ahead – the party. I tried to concentrate on what really mattered: you. You had invited me. You’d said you’d see me there. No matter what happened I had to ensure you did.

I packed a few things. Some clothes, deodorant, a toothbrush, stashed in the rucksack with my beers. I took my
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
video-case. I figured we’d need money and I now have over £454, built up in Hampton’s wage packets – more than enough to get the train down to the coast. More than enough to get the ferry to Finners Island.

I waited till 22:07, then walked to Goose’s. I figured this was a good time to arrive. The party would be well underway by then. You’d be there by then. As I reached the corner of Wallaby Drive I began to make out the chorus of Miss X’s ‘Screemin Boi’. As I approached number 7 the song had reached the breakdown, where Miss X pants erotically over the steady thud-thud of the bass drum. There were a couple of partygoers, year tens by the looks of it, asleep on the front path – one curled by the flower tubs, the other face down beneath the vomit-splattered bonnet of Goose’s parents’ Mercedes. The front door was wide open, the hallway beyond it heaving with bodies.

It was even more packed than I’d expected. People were squeezed into every corner, slouched in every doorway, perched on every step of the staircase. They laughed, smoked, swigged various coloured liquids from various cans and bottles. They smelt of beer, cigarettes, cherries and sweat. You were nowhere to be seen. It dawned on me that I was overdressed: the girls were dolled up – tight-fitting dresses, the usual Vulture hair and makeup – but the boys were all wearing T-shirt-and-jean combos. A few had styled their hair with gel but that was the only evidence of any pride in their appearance.

I stepped back out into the front garden. I inhaled a couple of lungfuls of icy night air. The beer-buzz seemed to be wearing off and my hands were trembling, rattling my backpack, clinking the bottles inside. I rested the backpack on the doorstep and dragged off my Christmas jumper. I untucked my shirt and ruffled my hair. One of the year tens raised his head and asked if I had a glass of water. I told him I didn’t. I had beer, though.

‘That’ll do.’

I handed him a bottle. He gave me a thumbs up and hugged it to his chest. He lay his face on the gravel. I didn’t want to disturb him with the offer of a bottle-opener so I turned and stepped inside the house again.

I squeezed my way in through the hall crowd. At first the mass body heat was a relief from the cold but it took mere seconds to increase to that uncomfortable neck-sweat stage. I apologised pretty much constantly for the amount of bodily contact I was making but I don’t think anyone could hear me. Miss X was still playing, a new song now, the phrase ‘Pleaser teaser’ or possibly ‘Teaser pleaser’ repeating over and over and over and over and over leaving the partygoers with no communicatory option but to lean in and scream into one another’s ears. All around me were voices but I couldn’t make out a single word they were saying. I searched for your face, the red curls of your hair, but the hall was so dark and the crowd was so vast and I couldn’t find you.

I pressed on to the kitchen. I figured it might be quieter there, I could cool off, catch my bearings, put my beers in the fridge. Only the kitchen was even livelier than the hallway. The fridge was open, its contents spread across the table and floor. Several foodstuffs were smeared up the walls – ketchup, dog food, something white and gloopy, possibly mayonnaise or fresh yoghurt. Most of the crowd congregated at the entrance to the conservatory, surrounding some fat kid who was standing on the pool table. Ian was over by the sink with Angela, pouring green liquid into two eggcups. They linked arms and downed the contents – Angela coughing, Ian laughing and slapping her back. Miss X was still playing, yet another song now, the chorus: ‘Foot fetish / Fetish feet / Give me something good to eat’.

The fat kid on the pool table was Eggy, one of the Oxbridge kids from my class. He was shouting something but it was impossible to distinguish over the music. He lifted an egg high above him, attempting that trick where you squeeze it between your thumb and finger to demonstrate the strength of the shell – only each time Eggy squeezed the egg burst in his hand, spilling yolk down his arm, splattering his shoes and the felt of the pool table. There were stacks of egg boxes piled beside him. People were laughing, shouting things over the music like ‘Go on, Eggy!’ and ‘You can do it, you smelly bastard!’ and a variety of other encouragements. Eggy kept trying, egg after egg after egg, angrier and angrier at each pop and splatter.

I pressed on to a section of unsplattered work-surface in the corner, over by the recycling box. I took a beer from my bag and cracked it open. I sipped, thumb-plugging the bottle to keep it from foaming. The beer was warm. It tasted like fizz. It made me thirsty, which is the opposite of what a beverage should do.

There were two partygoers sitting on the work-surface beside me. Hawaiian shirts, three-quarter-length trousers, sandals. One of them was bald but for a single strip of black hair, running from his forehead to the back of his neck. The other was blond, hair down to his shoulders.

Halfway through my beer I began to make out the odd stray shout of their conversation. They were discussing Lucy Marlowe. The near-bald kid was questioning her attractiveness. He thought her new boobs were too big, they looked out of place. He said Lucy was too short to pull them off. The blond kid disagreed, in his opinion there was no such thing as ‘too big’. I couldn’t help but glance over, following their conversation. The blond kid noticed my glances. Each time he’d catch my eye I’d look away, back over at Eggy and his egg-popping.

Then the blond kid slid from the work-surface, leaning over to scream in my ear.

‘Do I know you, man?’

I shook my head. He squinted at me. He leant over again.

‘What’s your name?’

I leant to his ear and told him.

‘What year are you in?’

I told him.

‘Hey, you in Lucy Marlowe’s class?’

I nodded. He grinned. The near-bald kid screamed ‘What?’ and the blond kid shouted something into his ear. Then the blond kid told me how lucky I am. He explained how attractive Lucy Marlowe is since her breast enhancement surgery. He asked if I’d got a good look at her post-op breasts. I told him I hadn’t. The blond kid advised me to keep an eye out for any breast-glimpse opportunity. He had a friend in the same class as Angela Hargrove and once she’d been running late and got changed for dance practice right in the middle of her Geography class and his friend had seen one of her nipples. I didn’t know how to respond to this. More and more partygoers were forcing their way into the kitchen to watch Eggy. He’d given up popping and was now trying to juggle the eggs. Ian was filling a dog bowl with green liquid. The dog was on the conservatory patio, roaring at the army of intruders in its house, barking a diamond of condensation onto the glass. Miss X was still playing, lyrics indecipherable.

You were still nowhere to be seen.

The blond kid asked who I fancied more, Lucy Marlowe or Angela Hargrove. I said I didn’t know.

‘You’ve got to know! If you don’t know, who does?’

I didn’t want to talk about girls any more so I told him I had a girlfriend. I thought that would stop him asking but he just whit-wooed and winked at the near-bald kid and asked even worse questions, which I won’t repeat here. I told him that what he was referring to was private, between me and my girl. I don’t know what his reaction to this was because by now I was concentrating solely on Eggy. The crowd had bored of his juggling and were hurling stuff at him, other foodstuffs – avocados, rashers of bacon, spoonfuls of the white gloopy substance.

They began to chant: ‘E-ggy! E-ggy! E-ggy!’

‘Wait, I know you!’ the blond kid shouted. ‘You’re that kid in Ian’s class! The psycho!’

The bald kid frowned. The blond kid leant to his ear and shouted something and they both laughed. I sipped my beer. The blond kid leant to my ear.

‘I know who you’re shaggin’! It’s Miss Hayes!’

Ian dropped the dog bowl and began to nibble at Angela’s neck. She laughed and tried to push him away. Eggy was retaliating, launching eggs out into the crowd. One splattered across the window, above the dog, and it leapt to bite at it from the other side of the glass. Miss X seemed to be getting louder and louder. The blond kid was saying something about Miss Hayes, about our weekly meetings. The crowd was still chanting.

You were still nowhere to be seen.

I placed my empty beer bottle in the recycling box, smiled once more at the Hawaiian-shirt kids and stepped out into the hallway. I was shaking so much I could feel the bottles in my backpack, clinking together. One of the bottles had dislodged from its cardboard sleeve and was nuzzling my spine. The Hawaiian-shirt kids were grinning. They may have been laughing, I don’t know – there was laughter everywhere and it was impossible to single out theirs.

I knew I needed to find you. I needed to say what I had to say and get away from Goose’s, before more people noticed me. There were three other doorways across the hall and I squeezed through to each of them in turn. The first was locked. The second led to the dining room, which was in darkness, empty but for a couple perched on the window seat, kissing aggressively.

The third led to the living room. A gang of year tens were cross-legged in the centre of the room, sitting around a Monopoly board. They’d built a small town out of the game’s green and red plastic buildings and one of them was flooding the town with beer. The rest were rolling cigarettes using £500 notes. The TV was on, a channel with a topless woman who rolls on the floor while speaking into a telephone, but nobody was watching, everyone was drinking and shouting into one another’s ears. Lucy Marlowe and Carly Meadows were over in the corner, stabbing the keys of the Lamberts’ piano, roaring with laughter. It was impossible to hear anything over Miss X, still screeching from the stereo:

L–O–V–E,

It is an accessory

I returned to the dining room. I sat. I figured I’d wait it out. I had to see you eventually. It was impossible to spend the whole night in the house with you and not see you. Fate had thrown us together in the past and it would again. I just had to be patient.

I took my four remaining beers from the plastic Waitrose bag and lined them up on the dining table, along with the cigarettes and box of cooking matches. The kissing couple didn’t notice, or if they did then it didn’t affect the aggressiveness of their kissing. The party hummed around us, the odd Vulture-screech penetrating the music. At one point there was an almighty crash, followed by mass laughter and applause, which I assume was Eggy slipping from the pool table. Eventually the kissers departed, giggling and handholding. Finally the music died. By the time I’d opened my third beer it was 23:07.