Alice and the Fly (21 page)

The hallway had cleared when I left the dining room. Its carpet was littered with cans and bottles, reams of toilet roll. The partygoers had raided a box of fireworks and were setting them off in the garden – cheering along with their screeches and pops. I wondered how they’d celebrate the stroke of midnight. They’d already trashed the house, already set off the fireworks. The only possible climax was some sort of explosion, destroy the house completely. Some sort of human sacrifice, perhaps.

I needed the toilet. I stepped over to the stairs. As I passed the living room something gasped.

‘Oh my god!’

It was Carly Meadows. She was laid out on the couch, glaring up at me.

‘You’re that guy from class,’ she said.

I nodded. The living room had also pretty much emptied. There was Monopoly money everywhere. A different woman was topless on the TV, sucking a telephone like it was an ice-lolly.

‘Lucy, look,’ Carly said. ‘That guy from English is here.’

Lucy Marlowe sat up from behind the couch. She was chewing gum, clutching a half-drunk bottle of Navy Rum. Her top had slipped down so much that one of her nipples was sticking out. She looked me up and down.

‘Fuckin’ hell,’ she said.

I nodded. I sipped my beer, coughing as I swallowed. I tried not to look at the nipple.

‘That was amazin’ when you ran out of class the other day,’ Carly Meadows said. ‘Wasn’t that amazin’ when he ran out of class the other day, Lucy?’

‘It was amazin’.’

‘Amazin’.’

I thanked them, still nodding, still sipping my beer. Carly and Lucy glared up at me and I sipped until my bottle was empty. Then I picked at the label. The woman on the TV turned and raised her backside to the camera. She reached back and wobbled her bum cheeks.

I asked the girls if they’d seen Ian anywhere. Or Angela. Or even Goose.

They laughed.

‘What the fuck do you want with Angela?’ Carly Meadows said.

I asked if they’d seen you at all. They laughed again.

‘Alith? Have we theen Alith?’

‘Who the fuck’th Alith?’

I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Sometimes this helps my lisp. A rocket struck the window, ricocheting into the crowd. The partygoers swarmed in circles, laughing, screaming. The dog bounded between them, howling.

I asked the girls to excuse me. They laughed again.

‘Excuthe me!’

‘Excuthe!’

I stepped back through the hall. Lucy and Carly carried on talking. One of them used the world ‘psycho’ but I ignored it and carried on up the stairs. They were slick with sick and spilt beer and various partygoers were curled in various positions, sleeping in one another’s arms. At the top of the stairs were a guy and girl, huddled, aggressive-kissing. The guy was sucking the girl’s neck, pressing her face into the wall with one hand, thumb-rubbing her nipple with the other. The girl murmured. She clutched a bottle of Lambrini, tipping it too far, hissing a waterfall down the top three stairs.

The girl’s eyes opened.

It was Sarah.

She squealed and pushed the guy from her neck. It was the blond Hawaiian-shirt kid from the kitchen. He smirked. He wiped his mouth. Sarah frowned at me. It was that same frown she used to give the St Peter’s kids when they called her ‘Flake’ in the playground, like she was angry at my very soul.

Sarah excused herself, standing, fixing her top. She dragged me across the landing to the bathroom. The blond kid shouted, ‘Hey, she’s mine!’ but Sarah shushed him and slammed and locked the door.

The bathroom was vast and granite-tiled, adorned with candles, seashells, scented hand soaps. It made me think of Mum. The sink was brimming with water, wadded with toilet paper and some sort of green leafy foodstuff – spinach, maybe, or rocket salad. Sarah dragged me over to the shower. The curtain was pulled right across. It was patterned with little grey ducks.

‘Why are you here?’

I told Sarah that Goose was in my year. I came because of the party. It was New Year’s.

She continued to frown. ‘Who invited you?’

I couldn’t think of any names off the top of my head so I just said, ‘Ian Connor.’

She snorted. ‘As if.’

The shower curtain danced slightly in the breeze. The ducks swayed back and forth. Behind it lay a blurred pink figure. Sarah started to speak again but I had no idea what she was saying – I was too busy trying to work out if the pink figure was in fact a living, breathing, possibly naked person, listening in on our conversation. Sarah stopped talking. She turned her frown to the shower curtain. She turned to me. She tore the curtain back.

There was a woman, slumped in the foot of the shower, skin pink and glistening, mouth lipstick-red and open in an O. She was wearing a shower cap, which was pointless as she was made entirely of plastic and therefore already waterproof. The words ‘Flat-Chested Slut’ were painted across her inflated breasts in Tipp-Ex.

Sarah sighed and grabbed the woman and slung her across the room. She bounced off the door before settling, head wedged beneath the sink. Sarah dragged me into the shower and pulled the curtain across.

‘Look,’ she whispered, ‘you’re not going to fit in here. It’s just not going to happen. Plus Tony said a gang of Pitt kids are coming to trash the place any minute and let’s face it, if anyone’s getting a beating, it’s you.’

I told Sarah that I had to find somebody.

‘Who?’

I couldn’t say.

‘Whatever. Just hurry up and get out of here. If anyone asks, we’re not related, OK?’

I nodded. I thanked Sarah for the warning. She said, ‘Whatever,’ again and stepped out from the shower. After a quick mirror-check she left, slamming the door behind her.

I stepped over to the toilet. I placed my beer on the basin and took a pee. It was the longest pee of my life. Halfway through I noticed the plastic woman, still slumped on the floor, watching me, her mouth still shocked into an O.

By the time I stepped out onto the landing again, Sarah and the blond kid had gone. Out in the garden someone was screaming, possibly a victim of a ricocheted firework. The dog was barking. There were three doors along the landing, all of which were shut. At the far end was another stairway, leading up to some sort of attic room. I could make out giggling. A lingering chipotle-smoke smell.

I climbed the stairs. The giggling was accompanied by a squeaking. At the top of the stairs was another door, slightly ajar. I could make out Ian, or half of him at least, cross-legged at the foot of a wardrobe, holding his face. His shirt was torn, chin resting on his bare white chest, fringe curled over his knuckles. He was rocking back and forth and at first I thought the squeaking was coming from him, perhaps from his back pressing against the wardrobe behind him. But as I crept closer to the door-crack it was clear the squeaking was coming from the other side of the room, along with Goose’s laughter and a faint repetitive slapping.

I pressed the door open. A TV glared from the wall, broadcasting a blizzard of static. Goose’s bed was over by the window. There was a girl on it. At first I thought it might be you but I quickly recognised Angela. Her head bobbed, hang-mouthed, off the side, chin in the air, hair swaying into a puddle of vomit on the carpet. Goose stood beside her, giggling, tipping a bottle of beer onto her chest. It fizzed over her face, trickling through her hair into the ever-expanding vomit-puddle. Beer bubbles glistened on her forehead and eyelashes. The near-bald Hawaiian-shirt kid was there, hunched halfway down the bed, teeth gritted, gripping the mattress. He was jerking back and forth. His Hawaiian shirt was open, flapping about him. His eyes were closed, tight – his forehead locked into a frown.

Every few seconds Angela’s head turned from side to side, as if by turning her head she could avoid the sticky torrent of beer, but Goose was relentless in his pouring. When the bottle was empty he reached for another from a box beside the bed, cracking the lid with his teeth. I wasn’t sure if he’d noticed me – if any of them had. It didn’t seem to matter. Occasionally Angela would let out a sound – a grunt, or a short sharp intake of breath – and the Hawaiian-shirt kid would repeat the sound, imitate it. I’m not sure if he was aware he was doing this. The static light washed over them all. It danced chaotically, especially on Angela. Shadows flickered over her, like
Them
, hundreds of
Them
, swarming on her cold white skin.

As I retreated to the attic stairs Ian looked up from his lap. He took a second to focus on me but when he did he gave me a thumbs up. Then he shook his head, let it slide back into his hands.

I sat in the bathroom for a while. I don’t know how long. First I was sick in the sink and then I just sat on the side of the bath, watching my vomit chunks float amongst the leafy green stuff. I thought over the situation. If you weren’t up there with Goose, then you weren’t at the party. If you weren’t at the party then you must be at home. You must have a reason for staying at home and that reason was more than likely your father.

I knew then, what I had to do. Things were going to be more complicated than I’d thought. I wasn’t able to just meet you at the party, that was too easy. I was going to have to go out to the Pitt and get you.

A banging came from downstairs. I thought it was the partygoers. I assumed they’d decided to set off their fireworks indoors. The big New Year’s climax.

When I reached the foot of the stairs I realised it was the Pitt kids – a gang of them had arrived with baseball bats and were in the process of destroying the kitchen. The partygoers were still out in the garden. They’d built a bonfire from the last of the fireworks (the least entertaining ones – fountains, roman candles, Catherine wheels) and were sitting in a circle watching the screaming flames, crackling and flashing in various colours.

There were four Pitt kids in total. One of them was wearing a blue hoodie, not unlike your brother’s. I couldn’t be sure it was him because of the scarf covering his mouth, and he wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to assess the blueness of his eyes. He brought his bat down on the kitchen sink, the porcelain splitting clean down the middle. Two others were smashing the crockery. Another was dragging out the drawers, emptying them out onto the floor.

I knew that if I was going to face your father I couldn’t go empty-handed. I considered the Pitt kids’ bats. They were threatening enough but there was no way I could do any real damage, if it came to it. Not against your father. I doubt I could even reach his head.

Then one of the Pitt kids emptied the knife drawer and a selection of knives clattered across the tiles.

I crossed the kitchen to the knives. The Pitt kids stopped their smashing and stared at me, bats loose in their hands. They glared from under their hoods. I chose a knife, a large carving knife, like the ones at the butcher’s. I could feel the Pitt kids’ eyes on me as I examined it. Then I crossed the room again, to the door, and left.

The Pitt’s always been firework crazy. I remember those New Years with Nan and Herb, how they’d always make a big deal about getting fireworks. They wanted to make it special because at Christmas and birthdays we went to Skipdale – this was the only night my parents brought Sarah down to the Pitt. It was the only night I remember Herb leaving his chair. I used to believe Herb spent all year plugged into the wall, charging, waiting to launch into New Year’s Eve – into the drinking of Guinness and roasting of chestnuts and piling of rockets on the kitchen table, which I would inspect thoroughly. I’d pick the order in which the fireworks were to be launched, which would depend on the size of the rockets and the tradition of saving the biggest, most orbit-likely till last. Every year Herb would tell me we’d get at least one of the bastards into space.

Herb did the dangerous stuff. The garden was concrete so he couldn’t stab the tubes into soil the way the instructions said. Instead he’d arrange the rockets in their own individual plant pots. The garden was only twenty foot long, so the hundred-foot safety distance was out of the question, but for this one night of the year Herb would take a ‘Whatever happens, happens’ attitude (perhaps due to the Guinness) and would light as many rockets as he could, only hobbling to the relative safety of the kitchen doorway when the first few were screaming into the air. It seems odd but when I think back to New Years, to Herb skipping about with his safety lighter and Sarah balanced on Mum’s knee scratching at her toes and all the fireworks in their plant pots with all their screaming light and banging, my favourite part is still thinking about Nan, sitting in silence at the back of the kitchen, Mr Saunders curled on her knee. Thinking about Nan’s furry face as it followed each rocket up into the sky. It was as if after all those years she still wasn’t sure how it was done.

Tonight was no different. Rockets screeched from every garden, thundering and flowering through the murk of the sky, bathing the streets in light: red, green, golden yellow. The streets were misted in smoke. It was like a war zone. I crossed at the Rat and Dog. A crowd of drinkers had spilt from its doorway and were standing in a circle, linking arms and singing. Music hummed from the pub – chatter, laughter, shattering glass. I pulled my hood up and kept my head down. I hurried to the estates.

The knife was still tucked into my belt, cold against my hip. I couldn’t help but imagine it, pressing it into your father’s stomach, the resistance at first, before his belly gave way to it. It was a large belly and I’d need to give it some force. I’d need to be quick, if it came to it.

I stopped at the end of your road. I leant against the wall and heaved. Nothing came up. I couldn’t help but feel it, again and again, the knife popping your father’s stomach. I remembered Artie Sampson’s Father Christmas, doubled over on the pavement. That’s how your father would fall, sinking slowly till his face pressed into the ground. I clutched the handle of the knife and thought of you, your eye all swollen and black.

Your house was in darkness. Your father’s car was missing. I rang the bell. I couldn’t hear the ring so I tried knocking instead. I knocked again. Nothing. I knelt to the letterbox and pressed it open but it was too dark to see anything. It was only then I realised how much I was trembling. How much I was gritting my teeth.