Dead Lovely (9 page)

I’d done ecstasy in Tenerife, but never ever had I experienced anything quite like those mushrooms. Kyle and I sat on the hill and chewed, and then lay down and waited. We looked into the sky and every now and again said: ‘Nup, nothing. You?’

Looking back now I know we weren’t waiting for the hallucinations, we were waiting for something to open the gates and let us finish what we had already started.

About an hour later, the gates opened. But instead of making us horny, it made us see amazing truths, which flooded the hills and the rocks and our heads.

‘One of us will die first and the other will have to go to the funeral.’

‘Sarah is the most beautiful, giving person I have ever ever known. She looks after me. Looks. After. Me.’

‘Being a doctor sucks.’

‘I love you, Kyle.’

‘I love you, Krissie.’

‘That cloud looks like a giraffe.’

‘Let’s follow it.’

And so for the next hour or so Kyle and I talked absolute shite, stopping occasionally to cry,
occasionally
to laugh, and eventually staggered into the campsite at about eleven pm. How we actually found our way there I’ll never know.

I was too far gone to erect my tent, so we both crawled in beside Sarah, who was sleeping like a log.

We fell asleep immediately.

When I woke up I had no idea where I was or even who I was. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Kyle lying next to me, Sarah on the other side. His face was so pretty, and I wanted to cry with love for him. And before I knew it, a desperate need overwhelmed me. I had to have him in my mouth.

I didn’t give myself time to think, and slowly crawled under the covers and kissed him.

I used to have dreams about fellatio. Invariably the dicks were thin and pencil-like and – at least twice – turned to shit in my mouth, which made me wake up dry-retching. I’d thought once that these dreams meant I was a lesbian, but whenever I imagined being with a woman I worried about the logistics, and I decided that maybe the dreams just meant that I didn’t much like giving head.

Nothing could have been further from the truth that night. I could have spent my life down there. And I’ll never forget the best thing about it, which was when Kyle woke with a small moan, lifted up the sleeping bag, and looked down. He locked eyes with me for a split second before he twitched in climax.

After that, Kyle and I lay in the tent and stared at each other, fully awake, all night. We were in love; desperately, passionately in love.

The next morning we cooked baked beans over the gas stove and a battle raged within me. When I was young, I called my internal arguments my ‘talkers’. They would argue like this:

Don’t steal the sweetie, it’s wrong.

But I want it.

But it’s wrong.

But it’s a Curly Wurly.

You’ll go to hell! Don’t take it! It’s wrong.

It’s just chocolate. It’s just a Curly Wurly.

And now here they were again, my talkers, yapping away:

It’s wrong.

It’s fate.

It’s evil.

It’s love.

Sarah to my left, Kyle to my right.

Guilt. Desire.

It was like my two fists were clenched and locked in a battle against each other – punching away before me – and while they were bashing at each other I could not eat baked beans or even drink coffee. I was immobilised and it made me angry because, in a battle like this, one thing is certain: guilt has to win. It might take a while, and it might twist and turn, but until guilt wins, there will be hell to pay.

And that made me angry.

The way I dealt with it was to walk as fast as my talkers:

The marriage is over anyway.

I won’t tell her.

I’ll go home. I have to go home.

How can I have done that?

Just one kiss.

What harm would one kiss …

Sarah doesn’t understand him. The marriage has been over for years.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Sarah.

‘Yeah, yeah, fine … But I can’t face a tent tonight, and I need a bath.’

We reached the Kingshouse Hotel near Glencoe at four that afternoon. It was a shorter day, and Sarah’s feet seemed to cope with it. I determined to forget the thing with Kyle, then everything would be fine, just as it was before.

That was the plan.

What happened instead was this: Sarah grabbed a trolley and took the luggage upstairs while Kyle and I sat in the bar and drank two glasses of red wine each without speaking a word.

I could tell as I looked at Kyle that he was
gagging
for it. He couldn’t stop jigging his knee up and down, up and down, and his nerves hit the bar and ricocheted along and down to my stool.

‘Kyle, what happened last night …’ I started.

Before I could finish he said: ‘It’s over between Sarah and me.’

I skolled another glass of wine and thought of all the things I liked about Kyle. He was kind, for example.

‘I can’t leave her, though, Krissie – she’d die.’

‘I don’t want you to,’ I said.

After we ordered a second bottle I thought about how funny he was.

Another glass later I noticed that Kyle’s thighs (he had shorts on) were coated with soft, even, light brown hair and thought about the fact that the thighs were attached to the cock I had sucked on the evening before.

I loved him, wanted him, and he saw this in my eyes and touched my knee with his hand as he reached for his wallet to pay for what was now our third bottle of wine.

When Sarah finally came downstairs in skirt and top she had clearly had a bath or shower and styled
her hair. She sat carefully on a stool next to me, no doubt to avoid hair displacement, and crossed her shiny buffed legs.

‘You’re hammered!’ she said as we laughed wildly at something not very funny.

We ate steak pie and the like and started
watching
Germany v England on the telly. It was an extremely important qualifying match, and the place was filled with an equal number of Germans and Scots, and a few Aussies and English. When England scored, there was light applause and the Germans looked bewildered. This was Britain. Why was the place not erupting? Then the Germans scored and the place exploded.

Bloody Scotland, I thought to myself, the alcohol having touched a less jolly part of my thinking. ‘What the hell are we doing in a country that derives its only pleasure from the failure of its neighbour?’

Kyle understood, and discussed it with me through sticky toffee pudding, but Sarah found the whole atmosphere boring and a bit depressing, and went back to her room – again.

We danced to the eighties tunes on offer with the (victorious) Germans. Kyle was always a dad dancer – white man’s overbite, finger clicking, the occasional inappropriate twirl – but he made me laugh and was agile enough to catch me when I copied his twirl and almost fell to the ground. As he scooped me up, we noticed Matt and his evil eye at the bar. He had his
arm around the pretty blonde girl who’d served us our pie and I noticed a tattoo on his upper arm. LOVE, it said. Most fitting, and original.

‘Let me take you to your room,’ said Kyle, putting his arm around my waist. We staggered upstairs and along the corridor.

The hotel was two hundred years old, painted white, and on three levels. There were about forty rooms, and in our highly intoxicated state it took us a while to find mine. I fell to my bed with a clunk and Kyle stood over me, wondering.

‘Sit here for a bit!’ I banged on the bed beside me, and Kyle did as he was told, sitting down next to my horizontal swirling body.

‘So did you do something rude and imaginative with Sarah the other night?’ I asked.

‘I tried, but she wasn’t into it.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Not telling.’

‘Go on!’ I said, tickling the thigh that had so enthralled me all evening. ‘
Show
me then.’

‘I don’t want to do rude and imaginative with you, Krissie,’ he said, and then lay down beside me, looking deep into my eyes and stroking my hair. ‘I want to do nice and tender.’

With this, he kissed me, and I could see what he was aiming for. A soft meaningful kiss that takes your breath away. But I was way too drunk for nice, so for a while we fought each other – me wanting fast/
aggressive/over-soon-please-as-I-may-well-puke – him wanting slow/loving/meaningful.

By the time we got past the lengthy foreplay period, I had decided that it was best to go
missionary
because I had found a spot on the ceiling that, if I focused on it very hard, would stop the spinning.

I lay back and stared at it while Kyle undertook a rather adolescent thrusting, which he paused every few seconds in an agonising attempt to prevent ejaculation. He closed his eyes and grimaced as he throbbed.

‘I don’t mind!’ I said to him, hoping to God he’d just let it happen, but he was obviously devastated by his performance and didn’t.

‘No, no, it’s okay, just a minute!’ he kept saying. ‘I can … I can hold off … just …’

‘JUST COME FOR GOD’S SAKE!’ a voice yelled.

I looked at Kyle’s scrunched-up eyes, which opened in horror at the statement, and the throb stopped because he’d lost concentration and
therefore
control. Still on top of me, he stared into my eyes and then turned his head ninety degrees to the left and saw Sarah standing beside him.

‘Thank God for that, Kyle, the girl was about to throw up!’ she said, her voice flat but with an edge that plummeted into dark, scary territory.

We jumped, took cover, did all the things they do in the movies.

But Sarah played her role all wrong. She didn’t hit us or shoot us or yell or slam the door or even leave. Dressed only in her silk chemise, she sat down softly on the end of the bed and started to speak with a primary school teacher’s voice and no sign of a quivering lip.

‘It’s okay, don’t worry. This can be sorted out. All we have to do is be logical.’

From me: ‘Sarah! I’m so sorry!’

From Kyle: ‘I didn’t want to hurt you. I never meant for this to happen.’

‘You’re not listening, are you? I’m not angry. We can sort this out. Krissie, you and I have each got something that the other wants.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You can have each other. I don’t mind.’

Kyle and I looked perplexed.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You can have each other, but there’s a condition.’

I stared at her.

She smiled, almost kindly. ‘I get Robbie.’

I was so shocked I couldn’t move.

Then my shock turned to anger. I didn’t care that I was naked under a threadbare sheet with Sarah’s husband. I was furious. I got out of bed and began to dress.

‘You’re fucking crazy!’ I said.

I pulled my pants on in full view of both of them.

Zipped up my jeans. Tied shoelaces. Put difficult-to-untangle
sports bra on, then T-shirt. I stuffed all my things into my rucksack and strapped my tent to it. It took ages and was awkward and I was amazed that Sarah and Kyle continued to watch me the entire time, but they did, both sitting on the bed, watching until I walked out the door.

Sarah followed me to the foyer, where Matt and his pretty waitress were snogging on the abandoned dance floor. Like teenagers, their mouths moved angrily without pause.

‘Where are you going?’ Sarah yelled.

Matt and his bird stopped for air.

‘How dare you, Sarah?’

‘I hardly think you should be indignant. You left Robbie alone in your flat screaming while you screwed that ned downstairs. And you just fucked my husband.’

Matt and his bird sniggered into each other’s shoulders, and then resumed the eating.

I rushed out of the foyer and slammed the door. The cold night air hit me head on and I began to walk. I didn’t know where to, didn’t care. I just had to get away. From Sarah. From Kyle. From what I had just done. From what I was. A dreadful person.

And Sarah was right. I was an appalling mother.

My walk became a run as I sped upwards along a trail. The light of the hotel was replaced by
moonshine,
which was enough for me to see that the path had become thinner and more difficult, that it was
twisting up a ridge, getting steeper and steeper. I staggered over rocks, losing the path, and climbed and climbed in the blackness, crawling, in the end, to escape.

I must have been walking for about an hour, because eventually I reached the top of a hill and lay on my back breathing fast and shaking. Was I such a bad person that Sarah could honestly think I’d just hand Robbie over, like that? I was, wasn’t I? I was a bad person, and I should be punished.

I held my hands over my eyes to stop the stars from swirling, and when I took my hands away, I screamed, because Sarah, dressed in her silk nightie and Gore-tex jacket, was standing over me.

She held out her hand and hauled me to my feet and then grabbed my arm so tightly that it hurt. This was very scary. I had never had a fistfight with
anyone,
let alone my best friend since forever. I had never even wanted to. I was an only child with parents who loved each other and rarely yelled, so aggression and violence were alien to me.

The pain in my arm was piercing and I was in shock, unsure how to react. I imagined, as I found my way upright, that I would apologise for the
unforgivable
thing I’d just done, and that she would make me pay with a look that penetrated the depths of my Catholic soul. But also that somehow, through time, we might get over it. Wrong.

‘How dare you play hard done by? You’re a slut and you don’t deserve your child,’ she screamed at me.

‘What?’

‘You’re the worst mother I’ve ever known,
and
you’re a whore.’

‘Sarah!’

‘After all I’ve done for you! I’ve dedicated myself to you. Ever since that time when we were little, I’ve watched out for you, and this is what I get, you ungrateful deceitful SLUT.’

‘What time when we were little?’

‘Don’t pretend you don’t remember,’ Sarah yelled.

The air coming out of her nose was noisy, and her lips were crinkle-cut blue from the pursing. She moved towards me and I was petrified. What was she going to do? Punch me? Surely not.

Yes. She was going to punch me. She crunched her manicured fist into a tiny little ball and moved her elbow back expertly as if she were aiming her bow and arrow.

I cowered behind my hands like a baby while she punched me again and again on the top of my head.
It went on and on. It was never going to stop. I was going to be punched on the top of the head until I disappeared into the cliff like a nail.

I removed my hands from my face and took one on the chin in the interim.

‘You do remember! You’re a liar! Since then I promised myself I’d never let anything bad happen to you, and this is the thanks I get,’ Sarah yelled, hitting me in the face again.

I pushed her away with as much heave-ho as I could muster. I don’t remember seeing what
happened
when I did this, because I had shut my eyes with the shame of it. All I know is that when the push was over I opened my eyes and Sarah wasn’t there.

I shook my head and closed my eyes tight, and then opened them again slowly. I was still there, on the edge of a cliff with a sore head and no Sarah.

‘Sarah?’

Nothing.

‘Sarah!’

I spun around to see if she was behind me, with her squirrel’s fist ready to go at me again, or if she was hiding in the shadow of the boulder beside me, waiting. I crept around in the darkness at the top of that cliff, scouring the area, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Still terrified that she might pounce on me
suddenly,
I yelled again. ‘SARAH! I’M SORRY, PLEASE COME OUT! PLEASE! I’M SO SORRY!’

She didn’t answer and I began to panic. I made the sign of the cross that please God, please God, I hadn’t done her any harm. I scrabbled around trying to find her in the bushes, hoping she’d headed back to Kyle. Then I bent over the edge and looked down.

The moon and the stars were bright enough for me to see that the cliff face was practically vertical …

… and there was a body lying at the bottom of it.

Knowing there was no time to get help, I searched the cliff edge and found a ridge gradual enough to climb down. Focusing on each step, one at a time, I eventually reached the bottom. I then ran along the base towards the bent lump I’d seen from the top. She could be alive, I told myself. She could be okay.

But she wasn’t. When I found her she was face down in heather. Turning her over, I screamed and screamed.

Her eyes were closed and I knew she was dead.

I screamed again, and cried and shook and punched things and jumped up and down on the spot and cried again and then sat with my face in my hands, trembling. And when I took my hands away from my face I saw that they were drenched in blood. I fainted, and when I came to, her body was still lifeless.

‘God, God, Sarah, I’m sorry. What have I done? Oh no, God, I’m sorry. Please please please help! HELP ME!’

Some common sense must have returned because I tried to phone 999. I ran up and down hills and perched myself on precipices trying to get
reception,
finally managing to get a couple of notches. Then the screen lit up and I saw Robbie’s picture. I’d taken the photo the same day I’d shagged Marco. It was the first day of my good-mother strategy. I was going to hang out with Robbie for long periods of time, play with him on living room floors, make Santa beards in bubble baths and don clever voices at story-time. I had resolved to be a selfless, constant mother. As I looked at the picture of my baby
snoozing
in his buggy by the duck pond, his little face melted me. He needed me. I couldn’t phone the police. I would lose him.

It was almost as if I’d flicked a switch as the
realisation
hit me and I returned to logical mode. What options did I have? Run away and leave Sarah’s body where it was? Bury her somewhere? Go back and tell Kyle and see what he thought I should do?

I looked at Robbie’s face again. There were no choices. I had to hide her.

I saw how high and remote I was. It felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, enveloped by inhospitable treeless mountains. I headed back towards Sarah’s body and started to descend. There were caves and crevices in the cliff face, and when the slope became more gentle I began searching for an opening that might do. It took a while – most of them were too
big, too small or too high – but eventually I found one that was just right. It was about thirty metres from the ridge I’d climbed down and almost
impossible
to see from below, let alone above. The front of it was covered in blue-green heather and it was only when you pushed the brush away that you noticed the opening. It was perfect.

I walked across to where Sarah was lying, touched her hair with my hand, and started crying. Sarah. My best friend since we were little girls. Murdered by me.

I clambered back up to where I’d left my rucksack, and retrieved the tent. I threw it down, blanching when it landed on Sarah’s body. Shit! (Too hard to think about now, I told myself.)

I raced back down again, my head throbbing from a mixture of hangover, exertion and Sarah’s punches, and then laid the tent out flat on the ground at the foot of the crevice. I took the pegs out and threw them aside, zipped Sarah’s jacket over her flimsy nightwear then began to move my best friend’s body from the heather onto the purple Gore-tex.

Nothing seemed real. She was still Sarah, not a body. I sat down in shock. Then I began shaking and sobbing. I pulled myself together and wrapped Sarah like a present, rolling her over and over till the loose material surrounded her, and covered her head in a neat envelope-shape at the end.

Oh God.

It took me an eternity to lift her body up and into the crevice, but I managed. The only problem was that her left arm kept coming out of its wrapping and falling out. I’d put it back in, but it always fell out again.

Exhausted, I gave up for a while and gathered rocks to cover the opening, but when I came back to the task at hand, that arm just would not go away.

My adrenalin kicked in again when I realised it was going to get light soon. I risked being discovered by walkers who would ring the police. I thought of Robbie again, then I picked up a rock and smashed Sarah’s shoulder bone. It crunched.

I shoved the dislocated arm behind Sarah’s neck. It looked like it was completely separate from the tent-wrapped body, an arm by itself in a ludicrous position.

After I’d put the last rock at the mouth of the crevice, I noticed the tent pegs. One at a time, I pressed my foot onto them and pushed them into the earth.

I then climbed back up to the top of the cliff, grabbed my rucksack, forced myself to stop crying and set off back down to the hotel.

Halfway down, my legs shaking and tears
streaming
down my face, a group of Germans passed by. It was dawn, and the land was grey-purple with the first hint of the sun. I put my head down and tried to
hide from them. They were hungover too, after the football victory of the evening before, and grunted at me without noticing my bloody face, tears, mascara stains, shakes, bruises, and no doubt evil murderous eyes. I thanked God and lifted my head again, only to find Matt standing in front of me in his trademark gear.

‘Shit!’ I jumped.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, not looking fine at all.

‘Did that prick hurt you?’

‘No, no, he didn’t hurt me.’

‘Listen, I never meant to … you know, insist.’

‘That’s fine, Matt,’ I said, walking away from him.

He yelled after me. Something about telling that guy Kyle he’d better fucking watch out. What goes around comes around, I think he said.

I ran the rest of the way.

When I reached the hotel, walkers had gathered outside with maps and thermoses ready for the hardest day of the walk, and staff inside were getting breakfast ready. I ran through the foyer and upstairs into my room.

Shutting the door behind me, I fell to the floor.

I don’t know how much time passed before I crawled into the shower, the blood and tears pouring from me. Steam filled the room.

Then I heard Sarah’s voice.

‘Krissie! Kriss!’

I slowly pulled back the curtain. But I couldn’t see a thing. Then a wave of fresh air cleared the steam a little, and her face came into view.

I screamed.

‘Shit, sorry, Kriss,’ said Kyle. ‘I thought you were dead. I’ve been knocking for ages.’

I grabbed a towel.

‘You have some blood on your head!’

‘Oh, I fell. It’s fine.’

‘Is everything okay?

‘No, it’s not, you know it’s not!’

I started to cry and Kyle sat me on a chair and put his arm around me.

‘Listen. It’s been over for a long, long time. We both knew that. We haven’t had sex in months. I know this is awful, but it had to happen.’

My crying was noisy but he was not put off.

‘You don’t understand,’ I started.

‘I do understand. Perfectly. I think I’ve loved you for years. Maybe I loved you from the first moment I laid eyes on you. Remember? You had on a black fisherman’s cap.’

I reached for the half bottle of wine from the night before and emptied it down my throat.

‘Can you get me some more?’ I asked.

He ran off downstairs and came back up barely a minute later.

I was lying on the bed when he returned, not with the wine I’d requested, but with vodka. Sex drink.

I gulped that down and took a shaky breath. ‘Sarah –’ I started.

‘She’ll have gone to the cottage,’ he said, standing in front of me. ‘She left and didn’t come back last night – didn’t even take her luggage. So there’s nothing we can do.’

‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, but he hushed me with his finger and sat beside me on the bed.

‘She wanted out. This trip was a last-ditch effort. My idea … stupid! So we shouldn’t feel guilty. We should feel relieved. I feel relieved.’ He put his hand against my cheek affectionately.

‘Kyle, you don’t understand, you have to leave.’

‘No I don’t.’ He pushed the hair off my face.

I flicked his hand away.

‘Hey,’ he said, playing with my hair again. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Kyle, stop!’

He almost fell off the bed with the force of my shove.

‘Jesus!’ he said, standing up.

‘Just get away from me!’ I yelled.

He stood and looked at me, first with
bewilderment
and then with enlightenment. In a whispery thin voice he said out loud: ‘Derek was right. You are all the fucking same.’