‘Despite what you may think, Maggie darling,’ he drawled as I attempted to focus on him, ‘I do care about you – really.’
‘Rubbish.’ Someone bumped my back and I turned, tipping my entire drink down Charlie’s front in the process.
‘Whoops.’ I dabbed his shirt ineffectively with a beer mat. ‘Sorry about that. Quite a nice effect though.’ I stood back to admire the stain. ‘Sort of – marbled.’
‘For God’s sake, Maggie.’ He grabbed my hand. ‘This is pure silk.’
I laughed, happy to know it was possible to rattle Charlie. Then I had a thought. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Joseph was Lyons’s nephew?’
‘You did know. But it’s irrelevant. He deserves a chance.’
‘Charlie, you and I both know that if he wasn’t Lyons’s blood, you wouldn’t give him the time of day.’ I leaned forward conspiratorially, and tapped him carefully on the shoulder to emphasise my point. ‘After all, he’s not blonde and big-boobed, is he now?’ I paused to reflect. ‘Well, he is blond, I suppose.’
Charlie stared at me with dispassion; then he smiled roguishly. ‘No, and more’s the pity.’
‘You know, Charlie, you really are incot— incomp—’ I couldn’t seem to grasp the word. ‘Terrible,’ I finished lamely.
He waved a fifty-pound note at the barman. ‘Top us up, there’s a good chap. Call me an old fool, Maggie –’
‘You ol’ fool.’
He ignored me, ‘– but I feel sorry for that boy.’
‘Oh come on, Charlie,’ I spluttered. ‘Bene— bene—’ The word just wouldn’t come.
‘Benny who?’ he frowned. ‘Spit it out.’
‘
Benevolence
is hardly your forte.’ I swayed backwards triumphantly – and then, luckily, after a second or two, forwards again.
Bored now, Charlie’s hooded eyes darted over my shoulder to see what better prospects lay in store. ‘I really must go and clean up, darling. Blake’s got a bit of a dark past, that’s all I’m at liberty to say. His family are rather desperate, and we’re giving him a chance. But don’t be taken in by him.’
‘What do you mean?’ I suddenly felt rather more sober.
‘Let’s just say he can be a bit –’
‘What? Disingenuous?’
‘You managed
that
big word, didn’t you? Clever Maggie.’
I glared at him. At least I hoped it was a glare. I was having some trouble actually seeing.
‘Let’s not split hairs, shall we?’ Charlie ran a predatory finger down my cheek. ‘You’re very sexy when you’re cross, you know.’ And he moved off like a sleek cruiser through a throng of pedalos, a nubile blonde in his sights.
The music was getting louder, the pub crowd more rowdy. Bel’s guests were leaving the table now, mingling with the few dancers by the speakers. Digging my phone out of my bag, I squinted at it nervously. It was text-free, thank God. Before I could think about it too hard, I rang Seb, but he didn’t answer so I left a message.
‘If you’ve blocked, can you come down? I want you to meet my very best friend in the world, she’s called Bel. And I’d love to see you, lovely Seb. Whoops.’ Someone knocked the phone out of my hand. I retrieved it from the sticky floor without
quite
falling over, fortunately. ‘Are you still there? Did I mention that Bel’s my very best friend?’
Half an hour later I was contemplating a spin round the dance floor with Bel when I looked up to see Seb grinning at me from the bar. My tummy went all funny as I realised how pleased I was to see him, and how relieved I was to be pleased. He waved and mimed a drink and I waved my glass back.
‘There’s Seb.’ Bel poked me in the ribs. ‘He’s very hot, isn’t he?’
‘Do you think so?’ I said nonchalantly.
‘Why – don’t you?’ she teased. ‘Nothing like Alex.’ She caught my eye. ‘Sorry, sorry. Forget I said that.’
‘I will. I do quite like him.’
‘I’m glad.’ Bel hugged me impulsively. ‘God, I’m so pleased you’re finally getting over that idiot. Promise me you won’t go there again.’
‘I won’t.’ I smiled foolishly until I registered her words. I yelled over Blondie, ‘Sorry, what do you mean “
getting
” over him?’ Then I stumbled slightly as someone pirouetted past me. ‘Whoops. Sorry.’
‘Honestly, Mag,’ Bel looked all serious suddenly, ‘I think you ought to take it a bit easy now. Especially now I’m not going to be around to keep an eye on you.’
My head was starting to spin now. ‘Explain “easy”, can you?’
But Johnno’s mates from work struck up a chorus of ‘
For they
are jolly good fellows
’ and everyone joined in, and cheered a lot, and then Bel got all tearful as Nigel presented her and Johnno with a brand-new digital camera that we’d all chipped in for – ‘so you can email us on your great travels’ – and then Bel started on about how Sydney really wasn’t that far away, and her poor mother burst into the tears that had been brewing all night long. And I felt myself get quite teary too; God knew what I was going to do without the girl I’d shared everything with since we’d learned hospital corners at Brownies. (Bel’s were terrible, mine immaculate.)
And then Seb was behind me, his arms around me, and I felt the heavy cosh of alcohol strike me round the head, clutch me in its velvet hold. I leaned into his body with sudden exhaustion. ‘You called the police yesterday, didn’t you?’ I mumbled.
‘Yes,’ he murmured back. ‘Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, babe.’
And the thought made me want to cry. ‘Take me home, Seb, please,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘Would you mind?’
‘I’d be honoured, Maggie. Do you want to say goodbye first?’
‘I’ve got to take them to the airport tomorrow. I can’t face another farewell now.’
And so he drove me home in his sleek car, and as we travelled across Blackfriars Bridge, the OXO tower looking like a neon rocket about to blast off into the electric fug that hid London, I had a brilliant thought.
‘After I drop Bel off tomorrow evening, I’m going straight on to Cornwall.’ I raised my head from the leather headrest to peer at him. ‘You could come too, if you like.’
Before he could answer, I nodded off, and when we arrived at mine, Seb half-carried me upstairs and I passed out straight away.
So I missed the message on my answer-phone. The message about the stranger lurking by my door.
In and out of troubled drunken sleep, I slipped between horrid dreams where Joseph tried to kiss me all covered in blood while Seb watched us intently, except he looked like Charlie, his hooded eyes malevolent. And then I dreamed of Alex, laughing at the kitchen table, hollows for eyes, the night I’d come back early from filming in Cardiff and found him bare-chested and snorting grams of cocaine with his old college mate Riff, not long after our first Christmas together.
Somewhere deep down, perhaps there’d always been a tiny germ of doubt, of fear, about a man like Alex who could happily drink all day – but I’d surrendered without much struggle to something that felt so right. To something I’d never felt before – something I think I’d been waiting for since my mother had gone.
Alex never brought me flowers, or took me to fancy places. He wasn’t king of lavish gestures (though he did quite like the cake-shop downstairs), he was just him – shambolic, master of silly voices; every opinion held hard and argued for. But God, I knew he loved me. He’d hold me in his arms and stare at me, those sleepy eyes unblinking, and I’d gaze back. We were like children, discovering something new and mesmerising, something we couldn’t get enough of. For a while we almost did become one, clinging to each other like you would a life-raft; like we’d found the way home. Slowly Alex lured me in – he was
looking for a companion to join him in his decadence, although I didn’t realise it at first.
A month after we’d met, I took Alex to Pendarlin for the best week of my life. Bursting with happiness, with love and joy, I felt invincible, giant-like in my delight. I sat in the window-seat upstairs one day, basking in the warmth of the spring sun soaking through the old glass, and I realised I was almost euphoric. I watched Alex and his faithful friend cross the pea-green lawn with firewood, Alex waving up at me and Digby barking happily amid crowds of creamy yellow daffodils – and I ran down the higgledy-piggledy stairs and flung myself at my boyfriend just like his beloved dog did. I hadn’t known it was possible to feel like this.
The only trouble with getting quite so high is that you must inevitably come down again. And the crash is painful and hard. It’s a long way down from bliss.
At the start I think Alex saw me as his salvation – as perhaps I saw him as mine – and he hardly drank. Then the novelty wore off. I didn’t know he was already battling with an addiction that had its avaricious fingers clasped right inside his core; a greedy bastard of compulsion that wouldn’t let him go, that clung on like a succubus.
It took me a while to realise quite how steadfast that hold was – and when I did, it was too late to get out. It had been easy to let Alex become my mainstay. Before him, it had been work, always work, but years of suppressing my childhood pain now imploded, and I was distracted by his debauchery. I was sick of being sensible – perhaps that was the problem.
After only a few months we bought a flat together in Borough Market, much to my father’s politely alarmed surprise. Alex was already in the process of buying it when we met and, on a whim, asked me to come in with him. On a similar whim, I said yes. Initially I worried about leaving Bel’s, but Alex had just introduced her to Johnno, and so for a while my best friend and I celebrated our luck, our most fortuitous timing.
Alex and I spent our first Christmas alone in Cornwall. I cooked goose and red cabbage with apples and the most perfect roast potatoes (even if I did say so myself) on Christmas Day, although we probably drank more than we ate. I gave Alex a stocking full of silly stuff, false teeth you could wind up, bubble bath and tangerines. Alex bought me mittens because my hands were always cold, he said; a dustpan and brush because I was always breaking things – and a battered oak piano.
Maybe that was the beginning of the bad stuff. I didn’t want a piano; I didn’t want any reminder of my mother; though most of all I didn’t want to spoil Christmas Day. I tried hard to pretend I was glad, but I couldn’t overcome my dismay. On Boxing Day, after we’d walked Digby on the blustery beach, Alex asked me to play. I’d been dreading this moment.
‘I can’t,’ I said stiffly, slicing the Christmas cake with a shaking hand, ‘I don’t play any more.’
Alex tried to put his arm around me. ‘But I’ve been dying to hear you. Your dad said you’re great. He said he hoped you’d start again.’
It was a conspiracy, I realised, shrugging him off angrily. ‘I won’t play it, Alex. You might as well get rid of it. You shouldn’t have spent all that money on me anyway.’ I went to poke the dying fire, refusing to catch his eye. ‘And if you’ve talked to my dad, which you obviously have, then you know why I won’t go near it.’
‘I don’t know, Maggie. I really don’t know what you’re on about.’ He looked so confused that I felt a great stab of guilt. But I couldn’t explain. I sat on the footstool in front of the fire and lit the first of many cigarettes, though I was meant to have given up, and Alex went out to the kitchen and came back with an enormous glass of wine which turned into the whole bottle, and we had the most horrible row about me not letting go, of suppressing the past. I said I didn’t want to let go if it meant getting as drunk as he did, though I think I was quite pissed myself.
Then Alex suddenly let rip about my job, about the show I’d done with his dad all those months ago, telling me I shouldn’t be so moral about his drinking when I had no morals myself. I told him that was rubbish, that I just wanted to help people, but he said I was ‘fucking naïve’ – and that I shouldn’t try to change people, especially not him. And then I went to bed alone for the first but not the last time since we’d been together and cried piteously.
In the morning Alex brought me fresh coffee and burnt toast in bed – another first and certainly a last – and stroked my hair wordlessly, and I didn’t say anything about how drunk he’d been the night before, and he didn’t mention my job. In front of the fire, I tried to read a book I’d got for Christmas on old royal chefs, but I couldn’t concentrate.
It had snowed in the night and everything was white outside, rounded and smooth like the icing on the Christmas cake I’d made weeks before. Where there should have been hard edges there were none, and it looked quite magical, belying the harsh truth beneath: the naked trees and scraggy shrubs of bleak midwinter. Mendelssohn was playing on the stereo and Digby was chasing his tail in the snow as Alex came in. The coldness from the garden emanated from him; he was freezing despite his thick jumper, the snowflakes melting on the wool wet against my skin, and I wiped one from the bridge of his slightly skewed nose, and wrapped my arms around him to try to warm him.
‘I like this music,’ Alex said quietly. ‘I can imagine you playing it.’ He looked so sad as he leaned down to kiss me, and that kiss, I can’t describe it. It was like he was a drowning man, like he was fighting to survive. I was frightened by his desperation, frightened but entirely acquiescent as he pulled me onto the rug in front of that fire and tugged my nightie off. He made love to me like he wanted to destroy me; he was so fierce that I was literally breathless, crushed beneath his whole weight but not
caring, wanting suddenly to disappear beneath him. To disappear with him, or into him, perhaps.
‘I never want to let you go, Maggie,’ he whispered into my hair afterwards as we lay in the dusk, the room quiet now except for the hiss and snap of the fire, the only light the orange glow that flickered across our bodies. ‘I just want to stay here forever. It’s weird, but I’m –’ He trailed off.
‘What?’ I twisted my head to look at him. He was staring at the ceiling, where shadows danced. I’d never known him quite so melancholy.
‘I don’t know how to describe it. Scared?’
‘Of what, Alex?’ I clutched him tighter.
‘Scared I’m going to lose you, I suppose.’ And there was something in his voice I’d never heard before, something like desolation, and it scared me too. I hugged him hard and almost cried again and promised he wouldn’t lose me. And any fears I had about going down a path I didn’t like, well, I pushed them right away. I told myself he’d change, despite his words last night; I’d help him change if need be. I didn’t realise it would be me who did the changing.
We lay in silence listening to the fire until I promised I’d try to play the piano, I really would. Digby appeared suddenly at the window, grinning toothily, drooling, snowflakes like tiny crystals on his fur, begging to be let in, and we both jumped, then laughed shakily. But deep down I think we both knew the idyll had been shattered.
Alex got up. ‘I’ll get us a drink,’ he said, and I smiled, though with a sinking heart I knew he didn’t mean a cup of tea. He sloped off to open the door for the dog – and that was it. We had entered a new phase, without even realising it. The next phase. It was the beginning of Alex trying to bring me down with him, deliberately or not. And I never did play that wretched piano.
* * *
Just before dawn I snapped out of my dreams and sat bolt upright in bed, feeling nauseous and, as I gradually regained my memory, mortified. Even Digby looked vaguely embarrassed from his watchful position on the armchair. My skull felt like it was being hoovered from the inside. Digby slipped his nose onto his front paws and regarded me with plaintive eyes. ‘And you can shut up,’ I muttered at him, clutching my head.
My heart missed a beat as someone rolled over in the bed. Oh God. Seb. I flopped down again beside him – too fast; closed my eyes tight against the spinning world. Against Seb. His breathing was that of the happily unconscious. I listened miserably to the lone bird trying to summon dawn, attempting to get my head comfortable on the pillow – but whichever way I turned, I couldn’t place it quite right. I slipped an arm around Seb as he slept, then slipped it off again. It felt overfamiliar. Eventually I drifted into the weird land of still-drunken half-sleep and worry.
It wasn’t until Seb offered to drop me at work later that morning that I remembered with a heavy heart my invitation of the night before; and, with heavier heart, the fact he hadn’t answered. I sure as hell wasn’t going to repeat the request.
‘Okay?’ he asked, lacing his boots in the kitchen as I slipped my coat on. His dark eyes were twinkling in an I-know-you-feel-rotten kind of way.
‘Oh yes.’ I nodded my head with vigour and immediately regretted it. ‘Fine, thanks.’
We walked from the flat in silence through Green Dragon Court, towards the roar of rush-hour London Bridge, me concentrating hard on not being sick, and on concealing the fact I might be. An angelic-looking Asian child was leaning against a bollard under the railway arch, eating crisps, regarding us with great solemnity as we approached. I smiled down at him. He blinked eyelashes like velvet caterpillars at me and crunched up his final crisp.
‘Excuse me, miss.’
I stopped.
‘Do you want to see something?’ He licked his salty fingers carefully.
‘Okay,’ I smiled, with beneficence this time. I was pretty good with small children. The boy folded up his crisp packet very tight and tiny and tucked it into one anorak pocket. From the other, he fished out a pretty little pill-box, all greens and blues and sparkles.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I was enthusiastic, ‘isn’t it, Seb? Lovely treasure.’
Seb grinned politely. We started to walk on.
‘Do you want to see inside?’ The boy’s skin was like caramel, his cheeks a dusky pink as I looked down again, and shrugged. ‘Okay.’
The boy looked up at me, as solemn as the night is long. Then he wrenched the lid right off and thrust the box beneath my nose.
‘Oh,’ I exclaimed, and nearly threw up. Inside were three long and dirty yellow fingernails.
‘Wow,’ said Seb, peering down. ‘Impressive stuff.’
I managed to quell the nausea. ‘Are they yours?’
Devil-boy nodded. ‘They are now. But they were Sanjit’s. He didn’t want them no more. He gave them to me, and I gave him my Wayne Rooney poster, innit, cos I don’t like
him
no more.’
‘I see,’ I said a little shakily. ‘Well, thanks for showing us.’
‘Thassallright.’ The boy pocketed them again and, pulling his fluffy hood up against the morning chill, wandered off towards the chilly planes of Southwark Cathedral. Seb grinned at me, and for the first time that morning I felt a little more human.
‘Christ.’
The smile was instantly wiped from Seb’s face as we rounded the corner.
‘What?’ I followed his gaze to his car. His car that now had two, three – no, four, we saw as we circled it – flat tyres. He swore softly.
‘Oh God.’ I held onto the wall for a moment, bracing myself. ‘All four,’ I said numbly. ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘A coincidence?’ he muttered darkly, walking round the car. ‘Don’t be stupid. Look.’ He pointed at the back tyre. A chisel lay in the gutter; a screwdriver with a great shiny red handle protruded from a tyre’s rubber skin.
‘Oh.’
‘The fucking bastards.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said rather helplessly. I kept staring at the chisel; at its worn wooden handle.
‘Yeah, so am I.’ He sounded all Midlands suddenly, his features set and stern, pushing his dark hair back with a quick angry movement – a Seb I’d not seen before.
‘I’ll pay for them to be fixed, of course.’
I’d only seen him smiling.
‘Maggie, babe, there’s no fixing this little lot. They’re fucked.’
‘Well, I’ll – I’ll pay for the new tyres.’
He came back round the car and pulled me gently towards him. ‘Why should you pay? Is there something I should know?’
I felt my skin burn. ‘No,’ I muttered.
‘I mean, did you creep out and slash them last night? Are you Secret Slasher Maggie?’ He grinned at me; finally, he grinned. I felt my legs go weak with shock and relief.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Well then. What’s it to do with you?’
‘I dunno. I suppose I just thought –’
‘You mean, cos of the graffiti?’
I shrugged. ‘Well, someone’s got it in for me. Now it looks like they don’t like you much either.’
‘That’s true.’ Seb gave my fingers a squeeze. ‘But there’s safety in numbers, isn’t that what they say?’ He let my hand go and
dug in his pocket for his phone. ‘I’d better get this sorted, babe.’