Mesmeris (10 page)

‘I . . .’ I pointed at my hand. ‘There’s a – a – there’s a . . .’ I gagged over the sink.

He gripped my hands with one of his, turned the tap off with the other. He pulled me to his chest, held my quaking body in his arms. ‘It’s okay.’ He kissed my head. ‘You’re okay now. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. Never.’

I nodded against his chest, pressed my face into his shirt and breathed deeply. A creaking noise made us both look up. A middle-aged woman stood in the doorway, her tightly curled, grey hair rock solid on her head. She stared at Jack, stared at me and went out again.

‘We’d better go,’ Jack said.

As we crossed the bar, the woman came towards us, a man in a suit in tow.

‘There,’ the woman pointed at us. ‘That’s them.’

Jack put his hands up. ‘We’re going,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’ Then he laughed and suddenly it all seemed hilariously funny - the woman’s indignant face, the manager’s choking fury, the disgusted looks of the other customers. Jack picked up the half-empty bottle of wine, turned back to the gaping faces, and raised the bottle in the air. ‘Cheers!’

We ran, laughing, until I got a stitch and had to stop.

‘Her face!’ He mimicked her expression and set me off again. Even as I laughed, at the back of my mind, my parents watched. Would they recognise me?
I
didn’t recognise me.

‘I’d better ring home,’ I said. ‘It’s dark already.’

We sat on a bench. Jack pulled me inside his coat. It smelled of him, warm and clean, delicious. The phone rang and rang. Maybe something had happened to Lydia after all. My stomach did a somersault.

‘Hello?’

At last
. ‘Lydia, thank God! Are you okay?’

‘What? Who’s this?’

‘It’s me, stupid. Pearl.’

‘MUM!’

‘No Lydia, don’t call Mum. Just tell her I’m in Brighton and . . .’

‘MUM, PEARL’S IN BRIGHTON’

‘LYDIA!’

She’d gone.
Shit!

‘Pearl?’ Mum’s voice was scarily controlled. ‘What are you doing in Brighton?’

‘Mum . . .’

‘Is it that boy you were talking to?’ My mum had an unerring instinct for trouble.

‘Mum . . .’

‘Did you even go to the Tate?’

‘Of course I did. I’m just ringing to say I’m fine and I’ll be back later, okay?’

‘Pearl, you come home right now, d’you hear me?’

‘Bye, Mum. Love you.’

I closed my phone, stared at it for a moment. It rang immediately. I let it ring, turned it off when it stopped. ‘She’s going to kill me when I get back.’

He laughed, looked sideways at me. ‘D’you want to go home?’

I shook my head.

He smiled. ‘Find somewhere to stay?’

I nodded, didn’t even think of saying no. My pulse went crazy and nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We walked along the front and up the steps of the first hotel. Full, they said, despite the ‘vacancies’ sign prominently displayed in the window. The next three hotels said the same. No one was going to offer us a room looking as we did. Me, swollen lip, black smudges around the eyes, Jack, scarred forehead, deathly pale, dark eyed, and no luggage. We looked like a pair of junkies.

‘Have to settle for something less salubrious,’ Jack said. ‘Prepare yourself.’

The back streets of Brighton were seedy as hell. Even so, another two ‘hotels’ turned us down before we found one that had a room. The guy on the desk looked bored rigid, barely took his eyes from the TV, handed Jack a key without a glance. Seen it all before.

The reception area looked clean but the further we went up the stairs, the dirtier everything became. Hair and bits of paper clung together at the back of each step. My mind pictured all sorts of tiny creatures that might have set up home in those little piles of human debris. I tightened my grip on Jack’s hand. The place smelled of mouldy damp and overcooked cabbage. Paint peeled from the walls in patches, revealing small blotches of black mildew.

A bare light bulb lit the first floor, dangling on at least six inches of flex. It swung gently back and forth, flickered on and off. Our shadows loomed up in front of us, grew and shrank like something from a Hitchcock movie. I giggled at the unbelievable shabbiness of it all. It all felt like a great adventure. I’d have stayed anywhere with him.

The second floor had a narrow landing with two doors off it and no window. Our key said 2A, but neither door had a number on it. Jack pointed at the nearest one, raised his eyebrows. I shrugged. He knocked. No response. He put the key in the lock. The door swung open to reveal a tiny room, almost totally taken up by a double bed covered in a hideous orange candlewick bedspread.

We stood in the doorway. It smelled musty, but not as bad as the first floor. On the side of the bed nearest the door stood a small, chipped Formica table with a filthy, once white, plastic kettle on top. Alongside it, two unmatched mugs, one chipped, two tea bags, two of those fiddly little plastic tubs of milk and a bowl of sugar with an encrusted spoon stuck in it. On the other side of the bed, a matching, chipped, Formica table with a small bedside lamp on top, its tatty, fringed orange shade tilted at a jaunty angle. At least it had a shade, unlike the bare bulb that hung over the bed. We should have been grateful that it didn’t flicker on and off, I suppose. A washbasin stood in the far corner with a cracked mirror over it. Green and orange curtains in a sixties, geometric design hung in great loops from the metal rail. A few white plastic hooks lay, broken, on the threadbare carpet.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘I’ll find the bathroom,’ Jack said. ‘Sorry - not quite what I had in mind.’ He disappeared down the corridor.

While he was gone, I looked around the room. The stained basin was coming away from the wall. I wiped some of the grime off the mirror with a tissue. Frightened eyes stared back at me.

‘Found the bathroom.’ Jack stood in the doorway. ‘Cleaned it up a bit. Thought you’d want a shower.’ He handed me one of the two towels on the bed. It was a washed out grey colour, which looked as if it might once have been green. It felt hard, though, and smelled okay, so I was fairly sure that it was clean.

What I wanted was a long, hot soak in a scented bath, preferably with candles. What I got was a shower, of sorts. The bathroom had no window. An extractor fan came on with the measly light. The plughole was full of hair. I pulled the manky shower curtain across,
faded and patterned with mould. Water trickled out of the mildewed showerhead, scalding hot in the middle, freezing cold on the outside.

After the quickest ever shower, using the dried up, cracked lump that passed for soap, I began to dry myself. Then I saw the red and purple patches that stained the insides of my knees and thighs, and blotched my arms. All of a sudden, Tipper’s body was pressing against mine. I tasted his mouth, smelled that hellhole. I sat on the edge of the bath, head down, breathed slowly, evenly, until my head cleared. Then I put my clothes back on. They smelled of the yard, of soot and rotten food and filth. I made my way unsteadily back to the room.

Once Jack had gone to have his shower, I remembered my parents and turned my phone on. It rang straight away.

‘Pearl.’

‘Dad. Look, I was about to ring . . .’

‘What are you doing? Mum said you’re in Brighton.’

I couldn’t think what to say. ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll be home tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?
What
?’

‘Look, just trust me, okay? I had a terrible day,’ my voice broke, ‘and Jack saved me, and . . .’

‘Oh, Pearly. Are you okay?’

I nodded. Not much use to my dad.

‘We’ve been worried sick. School rang and said you’d left on your own. What on earth happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said. ‘Some people had a go at me, that’s all. I’m fine now.’

‘You don’t sound fine,’ he said. ‘Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you.’

‘No, Dad, it’s fine. I’m with Jack. He’ll look after me.’

‘Jack? The one from the pub?’ The way he said ‘pub’, just a little too forcefully, told me he was getting angry.

‘Yes.’

‘Let me speak to him, please.’

‘Not now. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’

‘Pearl . . .’

‘Love you.’ I turned my phone off, closed my eyes and lay back on the bed. Maybe I was doing the wrong thing. Maybe we should go home after all. I hated upsetting my parents, especially my dad. Jack walked through the door, his hair wet, dressed in just his jeans. He looked different, younger. I forgot about Dad.

Jack rubbed his hair with a towel, and looked at me. His hand froze mid rub. ‘Aren’t you getting into bed?’

I nodded and climbed in, fully clothed. He turned the light off. I heard him take his jeans off, saw his shadow move across the room. I thought my heart would give out when I realised he was naked. I felt him climb into bed beside me. The weight of him pulled the mattress down, tilted me towards him. I was so fired-up, I felt dizzy.

I waited for him to move. He didn’t. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

‘Aren’t you going to kiss me?’ I said.

‘No, but you may kiss me if you wish.’

‘What if I don’t?’

I watched the silhouette of his profile, saw him smile.

‘You’re a git,’ I said.

‘I know.’

I leaned over and kissed his closed lips, felt the heat from his body, touched his smooth skin. He didn’t respond so I kissed him again, a longer more determined kiss. He made a funny noise, a sort of groan.

‘Why don’t you kiss me back?’ I said.

‘I’m testing myself,’ he said, ‘seeing if I can resist you.’

A challenge then. I pressed my body against him. I kissed him again, a long, proper kiss. I felt him soften, felt his lips open and then I was on my back with him on top of me and he was kissing me, strong, deep kisses. His hands went inside my jumper, pulled it up. He kissed my breasts, while he pulled it over my head. As I lifted my arms, pain shot through my shoulders. I clamped my teeth together to suppress a yelp.

He froze. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You winced.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Yeah, you did.’ He sat up and pulled the cord above the bed. Blazing light filled the room, made my eyes sting. ‘Let me see.’ He pulled the covers back and stared at me. I folded my arms across my chest.

‘Shit!’ he said.

‘It’s fine.’ I stretched my hands to cover the livid blotches on my arms. ‘You have bruises too.’

‘Not like that. You’re telling me they don’t hurt?’

‘Not much.’

‘You’re a terrible liar.’ He turned away, pulled his knees up and rested his elbows on them. ‘Don’t know what I was thinking - after what they did to you today.’

Crushing disappointment made my throat constrict. ‘I’m fine - really.’

He looked at me as if I was something new, a curiosity. ‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like I don’t want to hurt you.’

What the hell?
‘Do you usually want to hurt people?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and he put his hands over his face. And we stayed like that, him hunched over, me staring at the side of his head, tears running into my pillow, until I must have fallen asleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

When I opened my eyes, the light was off. It was dark and quiet – the kind of solid quiet that only comes in the hours before dawn. I unstuck my face from the soggy pillow. Dingy yellow light filtered through gaps in the curtains, played over the empty bed. He’d gone.

A suppressed howl like an animal in pain came from somewhere. I jumped. My heart banged against my ribs. Then silence returned. As the minutes passed, I relaxed, decided it must have been a nightmare. My eyes closed and sleep, merciful sleep washed over me. I jerked awake and sat upright. No doubt this time. A definite groan came from close by, inside the room. I pulled my jumper on, gritting my teeth against the pain, and listened. Silence, but for the whoosh of blood in my ears.

Then the stifled moan came again, from the foot of the bed. The room was freezing. My breath hung in the air like smoke. I inched towards the edge of the bed on my belly.

He lay on the floor. Naked, in a foetal position, his eyes squeezed shut, hands clutching his head. A spasm racked his body. He convulsed, his face contorted with pain, cried out through clenched teeth.

‘Jack.’

His eyes snapped open. Black eyes.

‘I’ll call an ambulance.’

‘No.’ He convulsed again, drew his knees to his chest. Sweat glistened across his skin, despite the cold.

I ran to the sink, soaked a towel, and wrung it out. I crouched down beside him, wiped his brow, his face, the back of his neck. A raised weal ran down his spine

‘Oh, God!’ I said. ‘What did they do to you?’ It looked as if someone had run a knife down Jack’s back. Just below his waist, a horizontal wound crossed it. I touched the scar with the tip of my finger. Dry, the wounds not new, long healed.

‘Come into bed. You’re ill.’

His feverish eyes glowed, too shiny, too bright. ‘You need to go home.’ He clenched his teeth, as another wave of pain crossed his face.

‘Who did this?’

He shook his head.

‘Come to bed.’ I helped him to his feet. ‘We’ll get a doctor tomorrow – get some antibiotics – you’ll be fine.’ It took minutes for him to straighten up, longer to get into the bed.

‘You don’t know what I’ve done,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ I covered him over, tucked him in like a child.

He shivered. His teeth chattered. ‘It does matter. You have to get away.’

‘It’s okay.’ I wiped his brow again. The towel felt hot. He was burning up. I ran the towel under the tap again. As I tried to put it back on his forehead, he caught my hands.

His scorched eyes stared up at me. ‘Listen - while I remember. The day they took me.’

‘It’s a nightmare, Jack, that’s all.’

He spoke quickly, his voice urgent but low so that I had to lean close to hear him. ‘There was blood everywhere. Blood – everywhere.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s a nightmare.