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CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO

It was past one in the afternoon when I got home. Having not eaten in twenty-four hours, I was ravenous. I threw a frozen pizza in the oven and gorged on chocolate digestives while I waited.

With the pizza baked, I wandered through to the sitting room and relaxed on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table, plate on my lap. My hips ached in protest at last night’s cold, hard bed. I reached for the TV remote, but my hand stopped short as I realized what was on.

“I can’t believe you left me on my own again.”

“Erica, I’m s—”

“Do you know what I had for dinner last night?” She stopped pacing and fixed me with a furious stare. “Do you?”

“I was—”

“Rice Krispies with tap water. And do you know what I had for breakfast?”

“I—”

“Rice Krispies and tap water. And I bet you can guess what I just had for lunch...”

“Look, I—”

“Where the hell have you been?” She stood perfectly still, hands on her hips, anger radiating from her in hot waves, burning my cheeks.

“Erica, I was out longer than I expected,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Really?” She shook her head with a derisive laugh. “This has got to stop. What if something happens to you? What if you have an accident and end up in hospital for days, or weeks or months? What if you don’t come home at all? Have you thought about that? You said you didn’t want me to starve to death, right? Well maybe you ought to think about some kind of contingency plan, because at the moment you’re not just being inconsiderate, you’re being downright fucking selfish and irresponsible. And what the hell are you saying sorry for? You don’t even know what it means.”

Up until that moment, she may have been right. Chances are, I wouldn’t have even understood the question. But as I looked into her fiery eyes, felt the heat of her anger and fear and, with a growl from my belly, her hunger, too, I felt a little bit like I did know what it meant. It hurt me to look at her. “I’ve made you some lunch,” I said. “It’s upstairs.”

She finally dropped her stare and let out a deep sigh. “Did you bring me the extra-long fork, then?”

I unlocked the cage and swung the door open, stepped aside and waited. Erica stood firm for a moment, shaking her head and laughing incredulously to herself, clearly wrestling with the urge to continue her tirade. Finally, she shot me a weary glance and stormed out of the room.

I followed her across the driveway, watching her suck in great lungfuls of fresh, sweet air, her furious march reduced to a wistful stroll once exposed to natural light. She kicked at the gravel and flicked up her skirt and paused before the door to gaze up at the sun.

I ushered her inside and guided her to the sitting room, where my pizza was waiting. “Take your time,” I said. “Watch TV if you want. I’ll get you something to drink.”

She sat bolt upright, hands clasped between her knees, surveying her lunch. After a moment she looked up at me with a half smile and said, “Thank you.”

I took the cordless telephone from its cradle and retreated to the kitchen, where I browsed idly through the fridge for some time before noticing that it was virtually bare. I settled for a sandwich of sliced pastrami and plum chutney, and a cup of sugary tea.

I replayed every minute of last night in my head, from Rachel excitedly opening the door of her flat to the moment her fingers curled into her palm, and her head lolled to one side, and I curled up beside her and fell into a deep and contented sleep beneath the stars. I don’t know how long I stared out the window, but my tea was stone cold by the time it occurred to me to drink it.

“What the hell happened to you?”

I jolted awake to catch Erica eyeing me suspiciously as she put her empty plate in the sink. “What do you mean?”

“Your back,” she said, instructing me to turn around with a spiraling wave of her hand. “Is that
your
blood?”

The question disturbed me, its casual honesty a jarring reminder of the space I surely occupied in her mind. I felt suddenly exposed, inexplicably compelled to protest some semblance of innocence, however absurd. “As opposed to what?” was the best I could muster.

“Cut the crap,” she said, spinning me with a forceful hand to my shoulder. “Oh, God, you reek of perfume. Do I even want to know?”

“It’s nothing,” I assured her. “I fell over, that’s all.”

“Take your shirt off.”

“What? No.” I poured my cold tea into the sink and switched the kettle back on.

“Does it hurt?”

“Yes.” Now that she mentioned it.

“Come here.” She was around me and unbuttoning my shirt before I had time to object. “You can be the big man all you like, but you can’t see your own back. Unless you have no spine, obviously.” She tugged the shirt down over my arms and turned my back to her. After a moment’s silent examination, she laughed under her breath. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Fell over, did you? Over what, Beachy Head? What the hell did you do last night? You smell fucking horrific.”

I shrugged my shirt back up to my shoulders. “Right, well thank you for that diagn—”

“And you look even worse. You do realize you’ve got a thorn bush growing out of you, don’t you?” The shirt was all the way off this time, and crumpled at the far side of the kitchen floor. “Sit down, Uncle Fester,” she commanded. “I’ll find some tweezers.”

Erica spent a full hour pulling thorns and thistles and splinters of bark and twig from my back. She was less than careful, digging at me far more aggressively than was called for. Occasionally, she scratched at an open wound, ignoring my hissed complaints. Despite her deliberate clumsiness, however, she was creditably thorough. She worked in silence save for the odd “
Keep still,
” diligently removing every small trace of woodland flora to a neat mound on the table. Finally, she set aside the tweezers and stepped back to admire her work. “There,” she said proudly. “You’re tree-free.”

I was markedly more sore than I had been when she started, and I was distinctly aware of several trails of blood trickling down my back, but I couldn’t bring myself to criticize. Her shadow on me was warming, and I felt a certain disappointment that the services of her hands were no longer required. Was that the kind of thought uncles had about their nieces? I suspected it probably was, though it seemed a little inappropriate. “Thank you,” I said, somewhat inadequately.

“I haven’t finished yet,” she replied, a hint of a smile in her voice. I listened patiently as she pulled soft cotton wool from crinkling cellophane and unscrewed the metallic cap from a glass bottle. With one hand she took the towel from the back of my chair and bunched it roughly around my waist. “Okay, lean forward, nice and still, deep breath. This’ll sting a bit.”

I obeyed with a smile and rested my forehead on the table, anticipating the first bite of the TCP, the strange and intense splashed-acid cold burn rendered almost pleasurable by its promise to heal. What I got, however, was a wave of searing pain so intense that my brain cringed, and my eyes fell out of focus.

Erica slowly poured the bottle of antiseptic over my back, careful not to waste any on unbroken skin. I let out a shocked howl as my skin tightened and my body convulsed, my face pushed into the table, the pain enough for me to wonder whether she’d gone the whole hog and struck a match.

For her encore, as I made a desperate grab for the edge of the table, she put down the empty bottle and took a firm hold of the towel. Holding it taut across my back, she collected the dripping disinfectant and dragged it back over my wounds, rubbing it in forcefully enough to repeatedly bounce my head against the oak.

“
Now
you’re done,” she said finally, draping the towel around my shoulders. And then, as I made a groaning effort to regain my sight, she laid a hand on my fiery back, brought her lips in close to my ear and whispered, “I hope she was fucking worth it.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

Control. Control control control. Drive.

I didn’t know where I was going, and when I arrived in the city, I didn’t know how I’d got there. All I knew was that I needed to take back control of my life, or I wasn’t going to survive another week.

My back still stung. I’d ground my teeth until they bristled with every drawn breath, and my wrists ached from gripping the wheel so tight. I’d seen a hundred and ten from the Transit and the cab smelled of burnt oil and brake dust. I had a headache.

I sat on the corner of King Street, passing headlights sweeping through misty memories of an afternoon’s pacing and nail-biting and struggling with the thousand and one thoughts fighting so noisily for space in my head that not one could make itself heard. I remembered a pimply-faced youth in a bright red polo shirt selling me a larder-size fridge for the basement, with a three-star freezer compartment and a trapdoor shelf for bottles. I remembered not remembering what I was doing.

Control.

The girls came and went across the street, a parade of fake-fur collars and leather skirts, bare legs marbled and pale, eyes hollow and dark. They emerged from the shadows to lean through car windows; as each was whisked away, so she was replaced immediately by the next. They scrolled through almost hourly, their faces familiar by the third cycle. None looked twice in my direction as I sat entirely still in the darkness, all but invisible inside the van.

I watched them come and go, their expressions grow longer and the trembling of their knees more pronounced. I studied their posture, their energy, the alertness in their eyes, eliminating them one by one until, by eleven o’clock, I’d settled on the most favorable. And then, as I waited for her to reappear, a new face arrived and wiped the slate clean.

This one was perfect. She swayed unsteadily on her feet, the heavy hem of her coat swishing about her ankles as she whirled around, eyes darting nervously from one end of the street to the other, empty beer bottle thrown weakly into the bushes beside her. She was tall but narrow; between the woolen coat and the motorcycle boots, I imagined that her outfit must account for half of her weight.

I wasted no time; the van was fired up and at the opposite curb in an instant. Window lowered. Smile on face. “Hello,” I said.

She flashed a nervous smile, checking each end of the street again before she leaned in close to the window. “Do you want to talk to me?” she stuttered.

She seemed particularly atypical up close, in that her face was soft and unmarked, her hair recently washed and her coat remarkably well made. Intriguing. I stepped out onto the pavement and stood aside, holding the door open for her. “Yeah, why not?” I shrugged. “Slide over.”

“So...what do you want to do?” She looked more relaxed now that the van was moving and she had a cigarette lit, though the crack in her voice betrayed her true reticence.

“You tell me,” I suggested. “You got any special offers on?”

“Hands are twenty, lips are thirty and you can do me for sixty,” she said, without a trace of irony. “Or all three for eighty, which is the best bargain you’ll get this week. Turn left.”

Whilst I admired the simplicity of her pricing structure, I had to question its straightforwardness. She was charging twice as much to lie back and stare at the ceiling as she was to creatively choke herself, and she was adding a premium for splitting the workload. By my calculation, dividing the labor among all three departments should reduce the cost to thirty-six sixty-six at the advertised rates. She was charging a full retail markup. Astonishing.

She guided me to a narrow track between a field of allotments and the London line. Her coat was off before the engine. “So. Here, or...?” She looked at me with wide, expectant eyes, apparently awaiting further instruction.

“Well,” I pointed out, “there’s not a great deal of space in here.”

“No.” She frowned apologetically. “Sorry, I’ve never done this before.”

Even better. “You can’t be serious,” I said.

She clasped her hands uncomfortably in her lap. “I know, they all say that, right?”

“They?”

“You know...working girls.”

“All right, I’m confused,” I said. “Are you not one?”

She shook her head without much conviction. “I’m a barmaid,” she replied.

“Right. So, what, I pay you sixty pounds and you squirt me out a drink?”

“No.” She laughed. “What I meant was, I’m not doing this for a career, or to buy crack or anything.”

“Why are you doing it, then?”

“Because—” she sighed “—I just got laid off, and my boss is being an arsehole, and he says he can’t afford to pay me, and I need the cash.”

“Surely there are other bars?” I suggested.

“Yes, there are, but I’m not going to get another job and get paid before the end of this week, so my rent won’t get paid, the electric meter won’t get fed and neither will I. And before you say it, it takes longer to get any dole money than it does to get a job.” She lit another cigarette. I flicked on the ignition and rolled down her window. “And of course,” she continued, “there’s nothing to say that I
couldn’t
make a career out of this. I mean, if I can just shag for a couple of hours a night and make, like, thirty grand a year, I’m laughing, aren’t I? I mean it can’t be that bad, right?”

My mind wandered over to the hunting knife nestling in the glovebox and the nylon straps attached to the other side of the bulkhead just inches behind me.

Christ, what the fuck was I doing? Did I really feel so powerless in my own life that I had to take this poor, vulnerable creature’s to compensate? An act contrary to my every instinct, one that had already come close to ruining my life and indeed one that I consider a crime of pure, unadulterated cowardice? What the hell was I going to prove like this?

“Are you okay?”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She took a long drag. “Tammy.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Okay, Sammy.” She laughed. “Short for Samantha. You can look at my driving license if you want.”

I waved away the offer. “Samantha,” I said, “have you given any thought to the type of person who’s likely to pick you up?”

“Well, you picked me up,” she observed.

“Exactly.”

“What? You’re hardly some fat, smelly old codger, are you? If you came up to me in a club and bought me a few drinks, I’d probably shag you anyway, so what’s the difference?”

“The difference is, you’ve got no idea who I am. Nobody saw you get in here with me. That’s a pretty big risk for sixty quid.”
Take the bait, Sammy. It’s not too late.

She rolled her eyes with a weary smirk. “I’m not a child,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

She didn’t have a clue. I looked at her tiny hands and her skinny ankles, the uncertainty in her eyes outshining the defiance. With a sigh, I took out my wallet and dropped three twenties onto the seat beside her; she smiled and tucked them into her bag.

“Okay, good,” she said. She was welcome to it; I didn’t mind feeding her for the week. Indeed, I was about to start the van and drive her home when she hopped out onto the mud and slammed the door behind her. “Come on, let’s go.” She smiled, peering through the open window. “I haven’t got all night.”

* * *

I tried to give her one last chance. She didn’t belong here; she was a child, for Christ’s sake, desperate and out of her depth, and she was all but instructing me to do her harm. She didn’t deserve what was going to happen to her, but she was making no effort whatsoever to avoid it. Even as she slipped her shirt over her head, I wanted only to see her safely to her door, last chance, last chance, but God help me, the V of her soft, pale belly
(cut it)
and the peaks of her hips above her low-cut jeans, her little-girl jeans, so young, too young, no sense, no idea, never known pain or death or fear, just endless idle hope and bad fucking judgment—she was making it as difficult as she knew how. And sure enough, once she was naked and giving me the hurry-up, the choice was no longer mine.

The first time I put my hands around her neck, I held on until her grip on my wrists became weak, and her mouth gave up on its contorted efforts to suck in air. And then my body overruled itself and I simply let her go, sat back against the sliding door and watched her gulp and heave as she crawled to the wall and pulled herself upright. She fixed me with a look of startled anguish, bare chest heaving as she struggled back to life.

“I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” I wasn’t even sure which of us I was talking to.

“You,” she gasped. “You—”

“I know.” I nodded. “Too late for sorry, right? The damage is done.”

She knew as well as I did that I couldn’t let her go, but she struggled to her feet nonetheless. She began to cry as she staggered toward the back doors; she fumbled with the catch, sobbing and heaving and hiccupping hoarsely until the offside door swung open and ejected her into the mud. She landed on her hands and knees, retching violently as the fresh air hit her. I gave her a moment; I knew she wasn’t going far.

The second time, I was firm with myself. I pulled her back inside and straddled her naked hips and pressed my thumbs into her windpipe, silencing her screams. I maintained my grasp long after her hands fell away and her legs stopped thrashing, after her disbelieving, panicked stare faded and her eyes rolled back in her head. I held on through the faint twitching, until my arms ached and my fingers cramped and every trace of pink had vanished from her skin. And even then, I held on some more.

And now, as I sat idly tracing her cold contours with my fingertips, I felt no satisfaction at having shouted down the voice in my head. There was no elation, no relief. In spite of myself, I felt nothing but hollow.