The Unblemished (5 page)

'Maybe more than premium rate. We don't have the staff to make
your breakfast or clean your room. You know, the manager didn't
want me to open the door to you. But I have a charitable heart.'

Yeah, I bet you do.
'Just sort it for us, would you? It would mean
a lot to me. As you say, it's late, it's cold. We have nowhere else to
go. You wouldn't have us sleeping in the car, would you?'

Sarah put Claire in the lounge by the fire while she went to collect
their bags from the car. When she got back Nick gave her a key to a
room on the top floor but didn't offer to help carry their luggage.
With a stiff 'Sleep well,' he went back to the bar and started wiping
down a counter that was already gleaming.

Sarah ushered her daughter up to the room and set about making
the bed while Claire sat by the window staring in the direction of the
sea. When the sheets were on, Sarah felt fatigue wanting to pull her
down, but she fought it and made them both cups of tea. She sat
down on the arm of Claire's chair and stroked her daughter's
shoulder. She could see Claire's expression: slack, vapid, reflected in
the black glass. She was blinking so slowly it was as if there were
invisible weights on her eyelids.

It was difficult to remember a time before this, when she was a
happy, normal girl. When had she last laughed? Sarah placed a hand
on her shoulder, trying to infuse her with some of her own energy,
however much it was flagging. She thought back to before Manser,
when Andrew was alive. She supposed they had been happy then, if
not deliriously so. It was hard to be truly happy when you were struggling
with debt. At least life had been simpler. You knew what you
were up against. Sarah regretted the days lost to spreadsheets and
solicitors and advice centres; she couldn't remember what she had
said to Claire to get her out of her hair at those times. Go and see
your friends. Go and watch TV. She couldn't remember how her
daughter had changed from a small girl into a young woman with her
own opinions, standards, expectations. They had rowed, but only
because Sarah had been so tired all the time, not because of any
teenage stand-off. She vowed that once this whole mess was cleared
up, she would make time for her daughter, if Claire wanted it.

Claire refused, as she always did, the food – bananas, energy bars,
chocolate – Sarah proffered from her bag. She shook herself free
when Sarah attempted to help her undress; locked the door of the
bathroom to attend to her ablutions in private. She was compliant
when Sarah pulled back the covers on the double bed and pressed her
gently into it.

Sarah waited for Claire to go to sleep, but her daughter merely lay
there, staring up at the ceiling. She didn't like watching Claire sleep.
Even before this, she had never kept her eyes properly shut. It was too
much like keeping guard over a body. In Preston Sarah had taken her
to the family GP, who gave her a full physical examination and took
a sample of blood to be sent away for tests. There was nothing wrong
with her. In fact, ventured Dr Parks, she was in excellent condition.
Sarah had to hold herself back from grabbing his lapels and
screaming into his smug little face:
Are you blind? Does she look as
though she's in excellent condition?

'It's just a phase she's going through,' he'd said as they were
getting ready to go. 'She's a teenager. She finds everything boring at
the moment. That's about the shape of it.'

It didn't help that Claire seemed to be going off the rails at the time
of their crisis. Also, her inability, or reluctance to talk of her father's
death worried Sarah almost as much as the evidence of boys entering
her life. At each of the safe houses, it seemed there was a trap in the
shape of a young misfit, eager to drag someone into trouble with him
or her. Claire gave herself to them all, as if glad of a mate to hasten
her downward spiral. There had been one boy in particular, Edgar – a
difficult name to forget – whose influence had been particularly
invidious. They had been holed up in a Toxteth bedsit. Sarah had been
listening to City FM, a talkshow full of languid, catarrhal Liverpool
accents that was making her drowsy. The sound of a window
smashing had dragged her from slumber. She caught the boy trying to
coax her daughter through the glass. She had shrieked at him and
hauled him into the room. He could have been no older than ten or
eleven. His eyes were rifle green and would not stay still. They darted
around like steel bearings in a bagatelle game. Sarah had drilled him,
asking him if he had been sent by Manser. Panicked, she had also been
firing off instructions to Claire, that they must pack immediately and
be ready to go within the hour. It was no longer safe. And then:

Claire, crawling across the floor, holding on to Edgar's leg, pulling
herself up, her eyes fogged with what could only be desire. Burying
her face in Edgar's crotch. Sarah had shrunk from her daughter,
horrified. She watched as Claire's free hand travelled beneath her
skirt and began to massage the gusset of her knickers while animal
sounds came from her throat. Edgar had grinned at her, showing off
a range of tiny, brilliant white teeth. Then he had bent low, whispered
something in Claire's ear and charged out of the window with a speed
that Sarah thought could only end in tragedy. But when she rushed to
the opening, she couldn't see him anywhere.

It had been the Devil's own job trying to get her ready to flee
Liverpool. She had grown wan and weak and couldn't keep her eyes
off the window. After being dragged on to a dawn coach from Mount
Pleasant Claire had been unable to stop crying and, as the day wore
on, complained of terrible thirst and unbearable pain behind her eyes.
She vomited twice and the driver threatened to throw them off the
coach unless Claire calmed down. Somehow, Sarah was able to pacify
her. She found that shading her from the sunlight helped. A little
later, slumped under the seat, Claire fell asleep.

Sarah had begun to question ever leaving Preston in the first place.
At least there she had the strength that comes with knowing your
environment. Manser had been a problem in Preston but the trouble
was that he remained so. At least back there, it was just him that she
needed to be wary of. Now it seemed Claire was going to cause her
more grief than she believed could be possible. But at the back of her
mind, Sarah knew she could never have stayed in her home town.
What Manser had proposed, sidling up to her at Andrew's funeral,
was that she allow Claire to work for him, whoring. He guaranteed
an excellent price for such a perfectly toned, tight bit of girl.

'Men go for that,' he'd whispered, as she tossed a fistful of soil on
to her husband's coffin. 'She's got cracking tits. High. Firm. Nipples
up top. Quids in, I promise you. You could have your debt sorted out
in a couple of years. And I'll break her in for you, if she hasn't been
done already. Just so's you know it won't be some stranger nicking
her cherry.'

That night, they were out of their house, a suitcase full of clothes
between them.

Leaving the bathroom door open so she could keep an eye on the
bed, Sarah switched on the radio and drew a hot bath. It had been
such a long time since she allowed herself a pleasure such as this. She
felt almost guilty about it. Andy would never have a bath again; why
should she? But this was the way she had been feeling ever since his
death. She had not been allowed the time to grieve. All of these mad
thoughts, she knew, were the result of insecurities and stress
poisoning her in their need to be ejected. She was getting there, but
Christ, it was hard.

As she peeled away her clothing, she had to close her eyes. She
stepped into the bath and allowed herself to become totally
immersed. When her heartbeat was translated into violent spasms on
the surface, she emerged.

Reached for the razor blades tucked safely into their fold of paper
inside her washbag. Traced a finger over the recent scars that ran
along her arm like chevrons on a warning sign.

Her veins had grown plump in the heat. They throbbed, bluish, in
time to the piano music's pulse. She pressed the edge of a blade
against her wrist and scored lightly till a red bead bubbled there. Now
the other wrist. Now the sensitive flesh around her nipples. She
imagined Malcolm Manser's hungry mouth positioned above a hot
jet of blood from her carved forearms. She jabbed the razor into her
belly three, four, five times, just nicking the skin.

Breathless, she flung the blade away before her compulsion for
deeper wounding went too far. She bathed her cuts, weeping over the
lack of control she exerted, and the fear that one day she might find
some. Her past welled within her. The memory of men spilling a
different fluid over the pulse points of her body, no less vital, made her
feel sick. She told herself then that she was taking their money for her
family's betterment; that this was how survival among the dregs was
secured. You had to eke it out. You had to earn the right to do it.

Sarah remembered the empty nights sitting in the corner of a
squat hoping that the last candle wouldn't die out before morning.
Claire had not hesitated to leave her alone and Sarah had not asked
her to stay in those grim months after Andrew's death. It was better,
she believed, that Claire be out with friends, doing the kind of things
that young teenagers did, even if the risks were slightly increased with
Manser on the prowl. If he wanted to take her, she reasoned, he'd do
it whether she was sipping cider outside the local Spar or reading
magazines in her bedroom. She had done her best to instill the kind of
values she believed any child should possess. Compassion for others,
courtesy, a little steel in order to help her stand up for herself against
boors and bullies. She was determined that, the further away from
convention her family strayed during this nightmare period, the tighter
their bond would become. Andrew had been the focus, the ostensible
barrier between Manser and his desire. Andrew never stood a chance.
He was a dead man, really, long before the flames took him.

Sarah dried herself, her eyes following the diminishing smears of
mist on the mirror. Before long, the steam had retreated to a tiny disc
that eclipsed her reflected centre. It ceased to dwindle.

She checked the windows were all locked and brewed more tea.
She sat in the dark by the window, watching the people pottering
about in the buildings opposite. They too seemed slothful, dislocated,
as if trundling from room to room might expose the purpose that was
missing from their lives and provide a diversion.

A storm worried the horizon. As she watched, its thickness blotted
out the furthest part of the street. Lightning forked silently, far out to
sea, making white cracks in the night. Its enthusiasm failed to muster
anything so energetic from her; rather, it only served to make her feel
even more exhausted, as if it were sucking the life from her.

She made it to the bed as a clap of thunder caromed overhead.
Jesus. What a day. Switching off the radio, she reached for Claire's
hand. It was still, thin, cold. Sarah squeezed; Claire did not reciprocate.
Sometimes Sarah felt as though she were trying to mourn two
people. Sometimes the word 'family' was as alien to her as a phrase
of Russian.

She slept fitfully and dreamed of a swarm of lazy, bloated flies
invading her room. Some settled nervously on her wounds and fed
there. She imagined something larger flitting outside the window. The
flies, fattened, lifted like a black-beaded curtain and droned away.
She saw them coalesce beyond the window where her dream figure
hovered. He turned and favoured her with a shocking smile and she
saw it was a man made from shifting photographs cut from a
newspaper.

'Our time has come.' He enunciated each word with relish.
Although they were separated by glass, she heard every word. 'I
return,' he said. 'I return.'

Thin sexual warmth spread through her groin and she rose
through layers of sleep till the room swayed unpleasantly before her
sticky eyes. She padded to the bathroom and splashed water in her
face, confused and upset by the directionless need of her sex. The cuts
itched furiously. As she wrapped one of the hotel bathrobes around
her, Sarah caught sight of her body in the full-length mirror attached
to the back of the bathroom door. She loosened the sash of her
bathrobe and appraised herself for a moment, tried to see what it was
that Nick had been attracted to. Tried to ignore the swollen red
slashes that overwrote her figure. Her breasts were still good, heavy
and round and with a pleasing jiggle when she lifted her arms to
check out her profile. Her bum was firm, her legs shapely. Her face
was beginning to display its little collection of lines and shadows, but
her brown eyes were still clear, her short, sandy blonde hair free of
grey, her mouth full, with its little upturns at the corners of her lips.
Andy had said that made her always seem happy, even when she was
crying.

Back in the bedroom, she watched the clean village high street
glisten after the storm. The country seemed fresh, almost alien to her.
Newly scrubbed, laid bare for the gradual soiling its inhabitants
would be party to. The roads were veins to be furred by traffic and
smog. She scratched her wrists and, when the sun came up, she was
too horrified by its colour to notice that she'd made herself bleed.

She must have drifted off to sleep again, because suddenly the
daylight was harsher, pressing bright fingers across her eyelids. She
sat up, panicked, her head filled with twisting shadows that bore
splintered, unreadable faces. Claire was sitting naked alongside her,
gazing out at the village. Sarah was shocked by her daughter's
burgeoning sexuality. Her breasts were already almost as big as her
mother's, her hips broadening, the flush of womanhood surging
through her like heat. She was beautiful and, Sarah could see, she had
that ingredient, that seasoning that would have men stumbling over
their own tongues for her. Sarah herself never had that power over
men, but it was in Claire's eyes. A spark, a dangerous gleam of
knowledge. The leap between holding her baby in her arms, moments
old, to this seemed all at once too short. Her child was grown up.
That time of innocence, trust and reliance was shrivelling away like
petals in a fire. The pain of that loss, despite her daughter sitting with
her in the room, was staggering, overwhelming.