I lit up a cigarette and for a few minutes the rest of us sat in silence. When the assistant had told me Tori was sedated, I'd half-expected to find her subdued or sleepy - but it was more that she seemed easily distracted: flitting between topics, beginning and ending new conversations almost at random. Without the drugs, she'd probably have been bouncing off the walls. With them, the manic side was still there, but came through in a kind of grey-scale, like a dance tune with the volume turned down.
Eventually I turned to Choc. 'How are you doing?'
He shrugged, lit up a cigarette of his own. 'This and that, you know. We're doing all right.'
'That's good.'
He gestured across at Tori. 'She tell you what happened?'
'Most of it.' I shook my head, hesitating, and then said: 'I wish I'd done something.'
Everything dropped out of his expression, leaving it flat and blank. He nodded slowly, then said quietly: 'Tell me about it.'
I'd only met them a couple of times since that first night at Edward's. On both occasions they'd been pleasant enough company, and it had been easy to forget what they did for a living. But of course, once I knew, it was always there. They're very protective of me, Tori had said once, and I supposed that was one of the reasons I'd never taken against them. There was something about her that attracted all kinds of people; how those people behaved towards her had become a sort of barometer for me. If Choc cared about her and looked out for her, then he couldn't be so bad. Whereas Eddie was equally drawn in, but could somehow bring himself to hurt her.
'I'm glad you came, anyway,' Choc said. 'She's not stopped talking about you.'
'I wanted to. I felt like I should, you know?'
He exhaled smoke and nodded thoughtfully, staring off into space, considering something. I let the silence pan out. When he was done with the cigarette he put it under his shoe rather than in the bin.
'What you got planned after this?' he said.
'After this?'
'Yeah, yeah. You got some free time?'
I opened my mouth but he interrupted me to clarify.
'We're gonna have a word with someone. Thought you might like to come along.'
Tori turned around. 'Dave, you need some sun-cream, or else you'll burn.'
'Er, right.'
I looked around a little cluelessly, as though sun-cream might magically appear, but then Tori produced a bottle from beside her. She squeezed some out on my left arm and began rubbing it in. There was nothing sexual about it, and yet for some reason it felt totally inappropriate. But I let her.
As I did, Choc leaned back in his chair, watching me, and I knew our conversation wasn't over yet. I also knew exactly what he was talking about. A word with Eddie. As much as I hated him right now - and would happily have beaten the living shit out of him if I'd been there at the time - I wasn't sure I wanted to go down that particular route. Well, I did. And then I didn't.
But I could feel him watching me, and the weight of his gaze intensified everything I was feeling inside.
Tori was diligent and slow, making sure all of the sun-cream was rubbed in before I leaned around so she could do the same to my other arm. I watched her concentrating, the bruise on her face visible once again. Her legs were tucked under her, her shoulders narrowed from hunching over my arm, and she looked smaller than ever.
I could have picked her up with one hand, and she seemed so slow and steady that I might have managed it before she even realised.
As Tori finished, she looked at me and frowned. And then something occurred to her and she grabbed my wrist--
'Come on. I'll show you around.'
--as though she could physically move me away from the guilt she sensed in me. And perhaps away from Choc as well.
First of all, she showed me her bedroom.
'My diary. My books. I hang my clothes up in here.'
Tori moved quickly from item to item while I carefully observed the exclusion zone. Her room smelled of the perfume I associated with her. It came in a tall, thin bottle and had a flower inside. Sometimes, even now, I'd smell it while I was walking along and I'd turn around, expecting or hoping to see her.
'This is where I can get washed.'
She worked her way around the room, concentrating hard. And I knew it was all for my benefit: an attempt to distract me from how she could tell I was feeling. She probably wouldn't have been able to articulate it that way, but even now, at angles with the world, she was thinking of other people: sending me a radio message of reassurance from behind the static.
She came back out into the corridor.
'And how is Emma?'
'Emma?' I didn't know what to say. 'Things aren't great right now.'
'I'm sorry to hear that.' She tilted her head. 'But if it doesn't work out with her, there's always me.'
I felt that solidly, like a punch, and immediately told myself not to take it seriously.
'Ooh,' she grabbed my wrist again, eyes wide. 'Come on. I know what else to show you.'
She took me through to the second lounge, the one I'd not been into yet. It was almost identical to the other: comfortable chairs, tables, newspapers. But there weren't any people in here. Tori led me across to the far side of the room. She sat down at an upright piano, her back to me, and after hooking a stray hair behind her ear her fingers moved nimbly above the keys, expectant and ready.
'What shall I play?'
And seeing her like that, perched in front of a musical instrument I'd seen her play before, in better times, took everything up another notch.
'I don't know,' I managed to say. 'Do you know any Nine Inch Nails?'
'No, silly. You know this one.'
She started playing The Heart Asks Pleasure First, the one classical piece she knew I could bear to listen to.
But she couldn't quite do it. She missed notes and occasionally pressed two keys at once, and the more she went on, the more it faltered. As her fingers let her down, she frowned, then added her voice as well: gently singing along, eyes closed, supplementing the melody. But again, slightly off.
I listened to the fractured music. Even confined in this place, she was guileless and uninhibited, but I saw the frustration on her face as she noticed her mistakes. A piece of beautiful music, reduced to stops and starts.
Eddie did this, I reminded myself. It's not your fault.
But as she stopped playing, her expression full of bemused disappointment, I felt a knot in my throat tighten with anger until I could hardly breathe. Until - rightly or wrongly - I knew exactly what I was going to do.
Chapter Four
Sunday 7th August
When she had finished on the computer, she opened the internet browser's history menu and began erasing the pages one by one. Even though her flatmate was away, the deletions were a necessary part of the ritual. First you externalised. Then you cleared up.
She removed the search engine items for extreme porn sites and chat rooms, and then the details of the sites themselves. Her anonymous email address. Chat transcripts from the sex forums where she'd allowed people to tell her the things they wanted to do to her. She deleted all the web pages she'd so diligently searched for and explored. All the things that had, in their own way, personified the self-disgust and hatred she felt for everything about herself.
When it was done, she walked back across the room to where she'd left her clothes, and knew that it wasn't even close to being enough.
Half an hour later, Mary was sitting on the settee with her legs tucked underneath her, watching the television. Whatever release she'd felt from the internet had retightened now, and she felt even worse than before. It was like lancing a boil. If you didn't get all the shit out in one go, all you did was make the infection worse.
The room was slowly darkening along with the day outside, and the light from the television flickered across her. Mary stared through the screen as images flashed up in front; news rendered meaningless in the silence. The only movement she allowed herself was to rub a single fingertip along one eyebrow, smoothing it down. One direction, over and over. Whenever she made a larger motion it shocked her body, as though someone had just shaken her suddenly and violently from a deep sleep.
No good.
It was astonishing really - how you could understand the emotions behind your actions and moods, and still remain in thrall to them. Mary knew from experience that in a few days' time, she'd look back on this and barely recognise herself. She'd see a stranger. A small, inadequate girl, curled on the settee, reduced to folding her arms and clenching her sleeves, and her skin along with them. Eventually, her mood would clear and the grip would lessen. But even though she knew this very clearly right now, it was no help whatsoever. Her depressions were like sinking into the blackest of dreams. No memory of the real world could help you.
A nightmare had prompted this latest attack.
As always, it had been drawn from her childhood, only for her mind to sketch over the top and elongate the details. Faces were stretched oval, so that teeth became fangs; fingers were popped double-length and formed into talons; an ordinary suburban kitchen was transformed into the scullery of a castle. Mary stood terrified as an enormous, dark-green vampire pressed the face of a peasant onto the top of a glowing red anvil. The man's fingers clawed desperately, but she couldn't even hear his screams over the angry barking of the monster holding him down.
Who sent you here? Who sent you?
Steam billowed up around a single, bright white eye, wide with panic, and Mary's mind flashed up images of burning meat, of charred carcasses hanging in the air around her, of blood running between the cobbles on the floor.
As frightened as she was, Mary was most concerned about the small, innocent boy standing behind her. She kept trying to block his view and protect him - but she couldn't, and it was making her cry. Every time she moved, his face slipped around her.
She'd woken up sobbing hysterically. That same feeling of helpless, terrified frustration had stayed with her for the past three days, building until now it felt like she would explode.
The silent television screen flickering before her, Mary leaned forwards and wrapped her forearms under her legs. Head to knees. Body shaking.
She turned on the light.
When she'd moved into the spare room of Katie's flat, Mary hadn't brought much stuff with her. There was hardly any room, but that was okay: her possessions amounted to little more than her clothes, a handful of books, her body, and a box full of more personal belongings that she always needed to have close by.
On her hands and knees in the bedroom, Mary rummaged inside the box until she found what she wanted, then went to the kitchen and selected a small bowl. She took the items back through to the lounge, moving slowly, as if sedated. Everything she saw in front of her was blurred by tears.
Thinking was almost impossible, but . . .
Close the curtains.
She could hear people on the main street outside, a storey below - laughing and joking - and she shut them all out and sat down on the settee. In the silence, she could hear herself crying.
Open the bag.
Once upon a time, as all stories begin, this had been her mother's sewing kit. When she was a little girl, she'd been fascinated by it: all those secret layers of fabric, slit open into hiding places for needles and packets of looped, multi-coloured thread. Her mother had left it behind when she finally moved away and, when Mary was a teenager, she'd discarded the sewing materials along with all the other things of her mother's she'd never look at again. From the very first foster home, she used the kit to carry tools she actually needed.
Mary took out the antiseptic liquid and poured some into the bowl. She selected a razorblade and immersed it, then produced cotton buds and antiseptic cream, placing them on the table beside the bowl for later.
Take deep breaths.
She did, but after a minute she was still shaking. Right there and then, she couldn't imagine anybody might feel more alone or completely without hope than she did. For the past few days, she'd resisted. But now, rather than fighting against it any longer, she allowed the feeling to fill her. It was like poison. The emotions poured out of her heart, forcing themselves in clotted lumps through her arteries and veins.
And then she finally began: rolling up her trouser leg, folding the material back on itself. There were a few scars there already - a criss-cross of old white lines amongst the fine, almost invisible hair - but still plenty of space.
Keep breathing.
She picked out the razor blade, shaking liquid off it.
When the first cut appeared, blood beading down the line, the sting of it felt like the first physical sensation she'd had all day.
Afterwards, Mary had exactly twenty new lines on the back of her calf, which was swollen, warm and felt like it was humming. The skin ached, but in a comfortable, pleasant way. She cleaned the wounds carefully with antiseptic before smothering her leg with cream. Blood still leaked out, forming red capillaries in the white, but she kept dabbing it gently with cotton pads. It didn't matter.
She was filled with euphoria.
Blood had gone everywhere, though. It had pooled around her ankle, and the smooth floor was messy with it. There were circles and stars from drips, and smeared curls where her bare foot had twitched across. The tissues she'd used were screwed up: blotched poppy-red, then discarded here and there. Even the mess was gratifying.
Sometimes, the only way to ease the feelings was to bring them out into the open, to create something physical that could be dealt with. Mary's calf had become a tapestry of all those unwanted emotions: the self-disgust and hatred; the regrets and frustrations. Each one was plain for her to see, and she could look after them now that they were visible.
Clean them carefully, and begin to heal.
She collected the tissues into a ball, wiped up the blood, and then took everything to the kitchen bin. When she walked back through to the front room, her leg was throbbing wonderfully, and it felt like she was walking on air.