Now You See Me (14 page)

‘Oh good,' I said sympathetically.

‘Who are
you
?' the boy said. His blue eyes were about ten sizes too big for his face.

‘Tom!' The mother gave him a look.

‘It's all right,' I said. ‘That's good.' I looked at the crumpled napkin.

‘It's a dinghy.' He held it up.

‘I can see that. It's brilliant. How old are you?'

‘Nearly six,' he said.

‘Well that's very good for nearly six.'

‘How old are you?'

‘Tom!' the mother said again but I could hardly hear her.

‘I've got a little boy,' I said.

‘Does he go to my same school?'

‘I don't know,' I said.

‘Why don't you?' he said. My hands were wet and trembling. I shoved them under the bones of my bum and pressed down against the chair until they hurt. The mother was looking at me strangely and I was strange. I could feel it coming over me, all the proper-personness slipping right away.

‘Must go,' I said. I got up and the chair fell over behind me with a sound like a gun-shot.

‘Excuse me,' the mother said as I went out the door. I didn't stop. I walked fast. I needed to pee and my face was swelling, I had to get away and get some air in my lungs. It was like I couldn't breathe and I needed to be alone to breathe. All the confusion, the lurching unbalance, all the worst things, as if I was being ambushed by the night right in the middle of the day. My face was falling off. I had to be alone. I heard the little boy shouting after me
Hey, hey
, and I ran. I ran till the last echo of the voice was gone, bumping into people and making them shout but never looking back.

I ran till I got to the public toilets. You have to plunge down steps into the swimming-pool smell where the hand-driers roar. I shut myself in a cubicle and rested my head against the painted door. My heart was going like a jack-hammer, beating right up till I thought my skull would split. I waited till it slowed down, listening to the voices and the flushing, the hand-driers and the voices. One voice said, ‘If you can't trust a sausage what can you trust?'

There was all sorts scratched on the door about people loving each other or being stupid fucking bitches and slags. I sat on the cold toilet seat and peed. Someone had changed the sign that said
Dispose of soiled dressings in the receptacle provided
. Crossing out
soiled dressings
and putting
jam-rags
. How could anybody be bothered to do that?

I came out and washed my hands and dried them on my jeans. Then with a shock that jolted through me like electricity I realised something was missing. The shopping, all the brand-new clothes in their swish bags. I'd left them behind in the cafe. All those carrier bags left behind.

I started walking back but I couldn't do it. I couldn't face seeing or speaking to another person. So I lost the clothes. It was all just a game anyway, make-believe. They weren't meant for me at all, they were meant for someone else. A possible version of me.

I stopped and swivelled round in the street and got tangled up with a crowd of little kids streaming off a coach outside the theatre. There was a pantomime on:
Dick Whittington
. A popcorn babble and smell. The teachers with scribbled faces gestured and grimaced at each other over all the different coloured heads. All these other lives going on and on, every single smallest one of them much realler than my own.

A carrier bag caught in a tree flapped at me. I looked away quick and got walking, walked all the way back from town. When I got there there was nobody and nothing had been moved since I left. Doggo's cup was still by the bed. It was cold and the dark had crept in again and got its stain all over everything but it was best to be in there alone. I didn't even care that Doggo had gone or if he was in prison or what. I had to be alone to give my face a rest from all the masks and expressions of the world. I had to let it slide right off. I curled up underneath the covers and tried to make my mind go blank.

Eighteen

There was a fog of days and I gave up. The police had got him or maybe it wasn't him, Doggo, the wanted man, the murderer. Sometimes the world outside is as much a fog as inside your head, nothing really real, believe what you want it's all the same. I lay under a grey blanket or maybe it wasn't a blanket but only my cloudy breath, my cloudy life. I don't know how long, then I did start to get myself together.

There is one thing that is real and clear and that is pain. I had to get real to start to get my balance back. It felt so high to climb now, the high wire too high above me to even see. I had to feel the pain to see straight, to even start the climb.

I don't do it any more. I don't keep sharp things, razor blades or knives. I even took the bottles to the bottle bank and let them smash safely inside the bin. But there is always something. I broke a biro and forced the sharp plastic under the skin above my wrist. The pain was sharp and real, the first clear thing for days, and the blood trickling was pressure running out.

I do know it's a stupid, ugly thing to do. I had therapy at the hospital and I do know that. The worst time, the last time, I lost too much blood. They thought I was trying to kill myself but I would never do a thing like that. And the wound got infected. I was moved to a proper hospital. Watching the doctors with their stethoscopes slung round their necks I thought
I
should be training to be one of them, not needing a doctor to stop me harming myself. Such a stupid waste of time. I felt embarrassed. That is when I stopped. I have stopped. This was just the once to help me get my balance back.

But while I was pushing the plastic into my arm I heard footsteps coming down the side of the house and then he was there, Doggo. Coming in in that bold way like he owns the place. The pain jammed a smile on my face. I pulled my sleeve down quick. There were tears on my cheek I hadn't even known were there. I wiped them off. He didn't see, the shades still on. He took them off but didn't look at me properly, or at all. He dropped his bag and flopped down on the deck chair, the dogs beside him.

‘Where've you been?' I said.

He looked grey and wrecked. He groaned and looked blearily up at me. ‘Any tea going?' I put the kettle on and went outside to the toilet. I pulled the plastic out of my arm, the blood flowed bright. The brightest thing in the whole wide world. I wadded up some toilet paper and put it in my sleeve.

I didn't know what to say to him, I felt shy. When I handed him the tea he cupped his gloves round it and hunched over.

‘I thought you'd gone,' I said in the end. ‘I thought maybe the police had got you.'

‘You said anything?'

I shook my head. ‘Doggo. Sorry I locked you out. I won't … I won't do it again.'

He nodded, blew across his tea and slurped. ‘Had to see someone. He owed me. Meant to be getting me a passport and some dosh.'

‘A passport for where?' I said.

‘The fuck out of here.'

‘What about the dogs?' The way he looked at me you'd think that was a really stupid question.

‘Anyway he never fucking showed, did he? He owed me. I'll fucking kill him.' A fleck of spit came out of his mouth when he said
kill
. I think he meant it. I didn't dare to say another word. After he'd finished the tea he smoked a fag. He was miles away, his black eyebrows scrunched together. He was shivering. I put the Calor gas on for him. The cellar was crowding with the smell of cigarette, damp man and dog.

He stubbed his fag out on the floor, nodded his head forward and shut his eyes. I think he went to sleep. While his eyes were closed I rolled up my sleeve and looked at the gash in my arm. The blood was slowing down. It soon loses its brightness, blood. It was ugly and sore, a new wound across the safe old scars. Stupid. Pain
can
help. But
he
was here now. I know he only came back because it was a place to hide. But it did prove he trusted me. He had come back to
me
.

He woke when Mr Dickens started moving about upstairs. We could hear the Zimmer frame, the toilet flushing and soon the kitchen tap. We had another cup of tea. Doggo washed his face and stretched. When he reached up his fingertips brushed the ceiling. I tried but mine were miles away.

‘Hey, like the hair,' he said. ‘It's really …'

‘Ta,' I said, I'd forgotten all about it. I ran my fingers through it, tried to fluff it up, wishing I still had the new clothes. But I could always get some more.

‘Might as well do garden since I'm here,' he said and squeezed out a bitter laugh. ‘While I was waiting for my mate I was planning garden, killing time. Thinking what could be done with it – if there was time.'

I opened my mouth to tell him what Mr Dickens said about the wanted man. I thought maybe if I could say it with a laugh, like, how ridiculous is that? it might be OK. But if it
was
him … but before I could decide he'd gone outside. I followed. Maybe it was best to leave things be. Outside in the daylight he took another look at me but this time said, ‘Christ, you look wasted.'

‘Not as wasted as you look,' I said.

We had to dig out the roots of a dead shrub and it was amazing, all the things in the soil, fat white grubs and worms, millipedes and a bent teaspoon all clogged up with earth. It reminded me of something I heard once: in one teaspoon of soil there are more living organisms than people on the entire planet. I took a handful of the damp earth and stood there thinking that. It was like I was holding a whole universe in the palm of my hand. My mind reeled just to think it.

Doggo frowned as he worked, ripping and wrenching the poor trembling bushes and slicing the spade down into the earth. Gordon came outside with Norma following. Doggo said Norma was poorly and off her food. I looked. She was quiet, lying down instead of frisking around in her usual way. I said why not take her to the vet but Doggo shook his head.

‘In case you're spotted?' I said.

He did an unwilling grin. ‘It's as much the …' He rubbed his fingers together. ‘Vets cost fuck of a lot.'

‘I'll pay,' I said. ‘I'll even take her for you if you like.'

He gave me a funny look. ‘I thought you were broke as me.'

‘I could take her Monday,' I said.

We heaved up the last bit of a great knobbly root and looked into the crater it left, which was hairy with fine broken-off fibres and the pink end of a worm sucking back into the earth. It looked so cold in there I shivered. I went to pet the dogs but Gordon growled and Norma didn't even look up.

‘Maybe she should see vet,' Doggo said, ‘if you
could
spare the dosh. As a lend.'

‘Sure,' I said, knowing what that meant. That he would have to stick around for at least a couple of days, ‘whatever'.

Mr Dickens called us in for tea. My mouth went dry, waiting for what Mr Dickens might say, thinking I was mad not to warn Doggo, but when we got in Mr Dickens' mind wasn't on that at all. He looked awful. He must have been feeling rough too because he asked me to make the tea – a much better idea since it meant we got to drink it while it was still hot. He hadn't got his teeth in. I'd hardly ever seen him without his teeth before. It was awful the way his voice lost its edges and his face caved in. I was embarrassed looking at him, thinking he must be embarrassed to be seen.

Doggo didn't seem to notice any difference, well he doesn't know him like I do. It was amazing how Doggo came to life and raved on about his plans, even getting out a notebook with a sketch. He can really draw, I was surprised. It had paths and flowerbeds marked out, and stepping stones across the lawn to a seat.

Mr Dickens gave us lunch of bread and sandwich-spread. Doggo ate it with his filthy gloves on. When we'd finished eating we told Mr Dickens we were going for a walk before we got started again. We went out the front and back round to the cellar.

When we got in I made some tea and he skinned up. It was so great to have someone else there. All the dark corners disappeared, as if light was shining out of Doggo or something although actually he was dirty, dark and hairy. If you didn't know he was a criminal, you'd guess. A murderer. I liked the way he just came in and made himself at home as if it was nothing strange and the way the dogs settled down too. It's not a bad place actually. It could be worse.

He still didn't take his gloves off and in the end I couldn't help asking why. He gave me a long look and took one glove off, as slowly as if he was peeling the flesh off the bones. There were sticking plasters all over his knuckles. ‘What have you done?' I said. He said nothing. He pulled up the corner of one of the plasters. It came up gradually, sticking and lifting the dark hairs and the thin skin on the back of his hand. Underneath was a raw red circle with wet oozing off it. ‘What have you
done
?' I said and then I knew. What he had done was get rid of the LOVE and HATE. It took me a minute to take it in. Then I asked him how.

‘Fag,' he said and I nearly passed right out thinking of the shocking burn and sizzle of that.

I swallowed. ‘Who put the plasters on for you?'

‘I did.' He got a strip of Band-Aid and a spray of Savlon out of his pocket. ‘Could you help me change them?'

I felt so chuffed that he asked me, like Florence Nightingale or something. I knelt down in front of him and carefully peeled off the old plasters. It must have hurt like hell but he didn't say anything, there was just a little catch in his breath. The burns were shiny red and runny, not with blood but with clear stuff. On the puffy edge of one you could still see a tiny bit of blue lettering, but I didn't point that out. I didn't want him burning himself any more.

After I'd sprayed the Savlon and put new plasters on I looked up. Our faces were very close together. Only maybe six inches from a kiss. We stuck like that for a breathless moment then he said, ‘Ta,' and leant back.