Wasted (10 page)

Jack discovered the meaning of “guilty” the next day at school. When he'd asked his teacher. “It's when you have done something bad,” she'd said. Sometimes a bad person steals or hurts someone else, so we say they are guilty. And they have to have a punishment. They have to pay for being bad.”

Jack did not know, and still doesn't, that his dad had used the word “guilty” about himself, not Jack. Because it was his dad who had put the long knife sticking up in the dishwasher. Perhaps Jack will never know this. But, to be honest, Jack has recovered. For a long time, he'd just felt bad without knowing why. And he'd grown up, become strong and dealt with life. Everyone said how brilliantly he was doing. Thirteen years had passed and that word “guilty” seemed like a nonsense.

It had turned into something else instead:
what if?
What if he hadn't kicked the ball? What if he had done anything differently, however small? Like not kicking the ball in the kitchen. Or kicking it differently. What if he had been watching Jess's drink? If he had tossed a coin, made a sacrifice that day…?

“It's this road, isn't it?” he asks.

Jess rouses herself. It is her road. She nods. She is exhausted, desperate to lie down. Her head feels like wet sand. “Number thirty-six,” she says. And they arrive, hurrying up the garden path.

Lightning flashes. Followed shortly afterwards by thunder. Jess jumps. She fumbles in her bag for her key. Turns it in the lock. The door opens into a dark hall. She finds the light switch. There is the noise of voices. Laughter. It's the television. Light creeps from under a door.

It is one in the morning, late for a parent to be watching television,
thinks Jack. She must have waited up for Jess.

“I'd better go,” he says. But he also feels he shouldn't. Or is that wishful thinking?

She turns. “Stay? Please. It's raining. And thunder.” And sure enough, it is. “Come in and have some tea or something.”

“You need to sleep. And get dry clothes on.” They are inside now and the rain is falling fast outside. It has to be said that the thunder and lightning are only occasional and distant, but it is a storm nevertheless and Jack does not particularly fancy walking home in it.

Choices race through his mind. Reasons to stay and reasons to go. He is torn between them. He knows what he wants.

“How about we call a taxi and you have some tea first?”

He agrees and she starts to dial the number for a taxi, her fingers clumsy on the buttons. Why hasn't her mum come out of the room, wonders Jack? Hasn't she heard? The door remains closed, the television making a tinny sound within.

Phone call made, Jess points him towards the kitchen. “Just going to get something dry to wear.” She goes upstairs. The bed looks tempting but she does not allow herself to sit. The mirror looks horrible. Her hair is matted around her face, her make-up blurred, her eyes wide and exhausted. She pulls off her wet clothes and tugs on jeans, T-shirt and jumper, brushes her hair, wipes her eyes. Gets a towel for Jack – she can think of no clothes that will fit him in this female house.

Back in the kitchen, she stumbles slightly with exhaustion. Jack puts a chair behind her and guides her into it. He has already put the kettle on, located the tea, two mugs, milk. Her head rests on one hand on the table, as though she does not have the strength to hold it up. She is still beautiful, he thinks. He dries his hair with the towel. So much for styling gel and carefully designed shapes.

“I do still feel weird, Jack. I was hallucinating. That doesn't happen with alcohol. It was horrible. Was I embarrassing?”

“You just suddenly seemed about to faint and you panicked. Freaked a bit. No, you weren't embarrassing.” He is not entirely telling the truth. “Anyway, you should tell your mum you're back.”

“She'll be asleep.”

“But the TV's still on.”

She stares at him. “She's still probably asleep.”

“She must have been waiting up for you.”

“Yeah, but if she's asleep she won't want to be woken.”

He looks doubtful. “Maybe you should go in and turn the TV off?”

“I can't move,” she says.

“Come on, silly. Course you can move.”

“I want to go to bed.”

“Well, you'll need to move, then, won't you? Come on, Jess – I need to know that everything's OK before I go. You need to be ready for bed and you need to tell your mum you're back.”

“Let's take this tea upstairs. I'll get ready for bed and then you can go. Everything will be fine.” The words are reasonable but she seems distracted. She stands up with her mug and sways a little.

“I'll carry the mugs.” Jack takes hers from her and waits for her to go out of the kitchen. They cross the hall and she goes towards the stairs.

“Jess, your mum.” He is standing by the sitting-room door.

“Honestly, I'll leave her. She likes the TV on.” Jess is on the stairs now. She is struggling to offer reasons not to disturb her mum. She does not want to go in there. Really does not.

He hesitates, not sure whether to push her. It is not, after all, his house.

“Come on, Jack, I want to go to bed.”

“Do you think you should turn the TV off?”

She stares at him, fumbling for words. Of course he is right. Of course, of course, of course, of course. She should go in and tell her mum she's back, tell her that she can go to bed now, that everything is all right, even introduce her to Jack. That would be normal.

But for all that she is exhausted, wiped clean by that little white pill and more alcohol than is ideal, confused, brain-shattered, Jess knows. She knows what she will find if they open that door.

She could refuse. Jack will not argue with her any more. It is her house, her mother, not his responsibility. He will give up if she holds her ground for five seconds more. She does not know this, but it is true.

Or she could give in to his common sense. She could open that door as Jack says and find what she knows she will find. And what then? What will she unleash?

To open the door or not to open the door? That is the question. And she wavers. Yes, no, yes, no, heads, tails.

In one strange and wild moment, she thinks of suggesting that they toss a coin.

“Toss you for it?” she says, not smiling. She is playing for time.

“I'm holding two mugs of tea.” He is playing for time too.

This is ridiculous. You do not toss a coin to decide whether you are going to go into a room at one-thirty in the morning just to turn a television off and say hello to someone. Part of his mind knows that.

“So I'll toss it, then,” says Jess, and suddenly, strangely, it doesn't seem ridiculous at all any more. She comes down the two steps and takes a coin from the bowl by the phone, throws it in the air, making a complete hash of it.

“No,” says Jack. “It has to be done properly. That doesn't count. Anyway, you forgot to say whether heads or tails means you go in or not.”

“OK, well, you know the rules. So you do it.”

He puts the mugs down. Picks up the coin and cleans it on his trousers. Places it on his hand, with the thumb underneath it, looks at her. “Heads, you go in. Tails, you don't. And you have to go with the answer.”

“Fine. Go on then.” It feels strangely easy, this letting go of choice. Handing over a decision to fate or chance or luck or whatever. The coin will decide and it won't be her problem.

Heads it is. Jess opens the door and finds what she knows she will find. It is not her fault. The coin decided. It is better that way and she finds herself oddly happy about it. It is a relief.

THE
room is too hot – the fire is on. The TV is blaring. A black cat is curled up by the fire. And the woman who is presumably Jess's mother is asleep on the sofa, snoring. Her mouth is slack and open, her face flopping sideways with gravity.

That's what Jack sees. It's quite amusing, at least at first sight. What Jess sees is only fractionally different, though she understands more. And to her it is not at all amusing. Her mother is drunk, unconscious, and saliva is hanging from the corner of her mouth. She doesn't need to see the bottle of gin to know that her mother is drunk, not just sleeping.

Jess sees the bottle of gin just as Jack does. Or, to be more accurate, a gin bottle. For there's no gin in it. Of course, there may only have been a tiny amount in it to start with, but this was not the case. The bottle is on its side and this position lends an extra seediness, as though even the bottle cannot remain upright.

Now Jack understands. Why Jess's mother had not heard them come in and why Jess did not want to open the door. And it's not amusing at all. He feels as though he has stumbled on something he was never meant to see.

“Listen, Jess, do you want me to cancel the taxi? I don't want to leave you.”

“What about your dad? Won't he be worried?” She is glad that he will stay, though what he can do, she does not know. She just feels that she would rather not spend the night with wolves, snakes and a drunkard mother.

“He's not expecting me back yet anyway. He'll be asleep but I'll text him to say I'm staying here. He'll be fine about it.”

Jess nods, empty of energy. She is looking down at her mum. She wants to do nothing, to walk away from there. To pretend it didn't happen. To wipe clean the whole disastrous night and start over in the morning. She is so tired and she should not have to think about anything else but herself.

Jack looks around, trying to take control of the situation. “Turn the fire off. Maybe find a blanket or something?” They can pretend that this is just a sleeping beauty if they want. But they both know it isn't. Jess nods again and moves towards the fire. Jack phones the taxi company and Jess goes upstairs to fetch the quilt from her mum's bed. In her mum's room, clothes are strewn everywhere. Make-up is open. A lipstick-edged wine glass sits on the dressing-table and there is a kind of shameful nakedness about it.

Jess's lips tighten. Her head is pounding and snakes are not far away, still hissing in her memory. She knows the snakes and wolves and unicorns are not really there but they were, oh, they were. She saw them and that's all that matters. More than a nightmare, more real than that, a kind of madness in her. Her mother should be there to help her, not dribbling on the sofa. Jess is frightened by what happened in the club. What are mothers for if not to comfort with soft warm arms and mother-smell when scary things have happened?

She goes downstairs with the quilt. “Mum?” Jess shakes her mum's shoulder. Sylvia is lying on her side already, so Jess need not move her much. She mumbles and half opens her eyes. Says something that sounds vaguely like her daughter's name. Groans, dribbles a little.

And in that raw moment Jess hates her mother. For doing this. For not being there. It is a moment that passes quickly. It passes from hate and anger to sadness and anger. And fear. But although the moment passes, it is important, because it has changed something between them. There is a seesaw tipping-point.

It is a faultline between them now. An earthquake crack in the road. Not a chasm, though. It is small, crossable; they could, either of them, leap over it fairly easily. Or even touch each other from opposite sides. But it is there.

It may widen or it may repair, depending on many things. If Jess or Jack or Sylvia knew what the future held, they might try to make different choices. Or that is what they think.

A
little later. Spike has been let out – ears back against the rain. The sitting room is silent, apart from Sylvia's snoring. A small lamp casts a soft glow, in case she wakes up and is confused. Confusion is highly likely in view of the state she's in. Though waking up is not.

Sylvia has, a few moments ago, been roused to brief consciousness – for Jess and Jack need to know that consciousness is possible. She has wiped her mouth, mumbled
Hello
and
Pleased to meet you
, fallen quickly back to sleep again. Jack has smiled at Jess, to show that he does not think less of her for having such a mother. Jess has smiled back, though she does not feel like smiling and it is a smile that is fragile.

This is not how the night was supposed to end: staring down at a dribbling mother. Jess is struck by the difference between herself and this so-called mother. She is glad her father left before all this happened. Though if he was here then perhaps her mother would not be like this. But how impossibly untangleable is the tangle of
what ifs
. Once the coin falls and life tumbles one way, infinite possible worlds become impossible. If you try to think of them too much it will turn you mad.

But when her father left, her mother did not go to pieces. She was angry, certainly, but didn't turn to the bottle. Unless she's been hiding it, Jess wonders, which perhaps would be easier with a young child than the near-adult that Jess now is. She doesn't seem to be hiding it now. Though perhaps it is actually
even
worse than it seems. Perhaps she takes empty bottles secretly out of the house and disposes of them. Jess has heard that alcoholics are devious like that. But deviousness has never been a Sylvia thing.

“You need to go to bed now,” says Jack. “Come on.”

And he follows Jess upstairs, after leaving the cold cups of tea on the kitchen table. Into her bedroom. She sits on the bed, shoulders slumped.

“Someone spiked my drink, didn't they?”

“It's hard to believe but I guess … I suppose. We should get you checked out, maybe?” Jack is struck by this thought as he says it. Should they? But Jess is better, she's lucid, she just needs to sleep. Surely. And with Jess's mother in that state, they can't go now, can they? He stands for a moment, tired himself, struggling to think.