My Best Friend Has Issues (23 page)

As soon as they left the flat I went and stood out on the terrace listening to the tourists drag their suitcases along the cobbled street. How I wished it was me.

I should pack now. I could pack for both of us. It would save time when Chloe came back.

If
she came back.

I’d have to hope she would, that her dad would fix things and we’d soon be on a plane to the States to start college.

I went into the bedroom and pulled my rucksack out from under the bed again. There was no point in sorting Chloe’s clothes from mine, we’d be taking everything anyway, but I didn’t want to mix clean clothes with dirty ones. Chloe’s clothes were strewn everywhere, the clean stuff in the laundry pile on the chair, the dirty stuff on the floor. I lifted the dirty clothes off the floor and piled them into the pillowcase I kept for my own dirty laundry. A vision of Sanj’s battered head inside the blood-soaked pillowcase jumped into my head. I didn’t want to think about pillowcases. I shoved it forcefully to the bottom of the rucksack. Then I started on the drawers.

Chloe’s underwear drawer had no system; bras pants and bikinis were flung in any old way. I tipped the lot out on to the bed and was amazed to find, rolled inside a hot pink swimming suit, my mobile phone.

Chloe searched that drawer for the phone, I saw her. There was no way she could have missed it. I remember she rifled through that pink swimsuit, it wasn’t there then. This could only mean that she’d put it there since. Which meant that she’d found it again, or never lost it at all.

Maybe she thought she was doing me a favour keeping me away from Ewan. She was always jealous of him, Chloe needed to be the most important person in my life. She told me she’d called him and told him I was in hospital, but that he didn’t want to see me. Maybe she hadn’t called him at all.

There was one way to find out. The phone battery was dead so I found the charger and plugged it in while I weighed up phoning Ewan. If I contacted him, he might turn me in. Even if he didn’t, it might be dangerous for him to get involved. Ewan knew Sanj’s uncle, there was every chance Mahmood knew Ewan. He might be watching him. Ewan could lead Mahmood straight to me. But this sounded, even in my paranoid state, too far fetched. I needed to speak to someone I could trust right now, more than anything I needed to hear a familiar Scottish voice.

‘Ewan?’

I could hear him breathing but he didn’t speak.

‘It’s me, Alison.’

‘Yes, I know,’ he said coldly.

‘Can you speak? Is it safe?’

‘What d’you want?’

So it was true, he didn’t want to see me.

‘I’m sorry, Ewan. I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all.’

‘Haven’t got time. Okay, bye now,’ he said casually and hung up.

I went back to sitting on the sofa, my packing forgotten. So Chloe hadn’t lied about Ewan, but why had she hidden my phone from me? And there was something else. Something she said before she left. She said that Bashed Head Boy was an accident. That he fell over the banister.

I’d looked at lots of flats in lots of buildings before I got to Bashed Head Boy’s building. It was the only one that had a banister. All the other flats had a lift in the centre of the stairwell. How did Chloe know his had a banister?

I’d often wondered about Chloe’s boyfriend, the one she and her dad were supposed to go to Vietnam with. She never talked about him. All I knew was she broke up with him because he wanted to party with his friends.

I went to see the flat in Raval because the Internet advert mentioned parties. I’d wanted to get invited. I had no proof that Bashed Head Boy had placed the advert, no proof that he’d been Chloe’s boyfriend. But I had my suspicions. If anyone was going to get the blame for Bashed Head Boy, it wasn’t going to be me.

I searched the flat, pulling out drawers, looking under the rugs and in behind furniture. I was looking for evidence: a photograph of Chloe with her boyfriend. There was nothing. Chloe didn’t even have any photos on the camera on her phone. Apart from all the photos she had around the place of her mum there were no other pictures. I thought this was suspicious.

Chloe had said they were going out for lunch but they’d been gone for hours. She was probably with her dad right now on a plane back to America where the sun always shone and powerful people got away with murder and left their naive accomplices to take the rap.

And then someone knocked on the door.

I didn’t freeze. I sat quietly awaiting my fate. I hoped it was the police rather than Mahmood’s people.

A voice out on the landing shouted, ‘Alison!’

It was Ewan.

I went to the hallway and crept behind the door and listened.

‘Alison, are you there?’

Ewan waited for me to open the door. Had he brought anyone with him? I couldn’t hear anyone else. I heard him sigh and begin to move downstairs. I opened the door.

‘Ewan?’ I whispered.

He stopped on the stairs and came back up again. He was alone. When he saw me he made no move to hug or kiss me on both cheeks. He made no mention of my black and blue face. I couldn’t look at him, I felt so ashamed.

‘It’s good to see you Ewan, take a seat.’

‘I’m not staying.’

‘Oh, okay.’

We stood awkwardly in the living room.

‘Were you just passing by?’

‘No, I was at my work,’ he growled.

‘No, I mean, is that why you’re here?’

‘I’m here because you phoned me.’

‘Right.’

‘What is it you want from me, Alison?’

‘Nothing. I don’t want anything, I just want to… Could you pick up the dogs from Josep’s?’

‘Alison, I don’t have time for this. I didn’t come round here to run bloody errands.’

‘Well, why did you come?’

‘I’m wondering that myself.’

‘Did Chloe tell you I was in hospital?’

‘Yes,’ he said and turned to walk out.

‘Don’t go Ewan, please.’

‘D’you want me to get your dogs or don’t you?’

‘Eh, yes. Yes please.’

He was back with the dogs within ten minutes. Juegita and the pups ran around madly, delighted to be home again.

‘Thanks very much, that was good of you.’

‘I don’t know why you couldn’t have gone for them yourself; it’s only at the bottom of the street.’

‘I can’t Ewan, I can’t…’

‘You can’t what? Can’t be arsed?’

He looked at me with such an expression of disgust I had to hide my face when I asked him.

‘Please, I need to know, have you heard about Sanj? What’s happening?’

He lunged forward and peeled my hand off my face.

‘So you’re mixed up in this Sanj thing, are you? I might’ve known. The American bird, she got you into it, didn’t she? That’ll be why you’ve got a sore face. Well you have no idea the trouble you’re in. This is serious shit. Mahmood doesn’t like people messing in his business. It’s a lot of Charlie. I’ve told you before, he’s fucking dangerous. He doesn’t piss about, d’you understand?’

When Ewan started shouting the dogs barked and jumped at him, trying to protect me.

‘I warned you. You’re just a stupid wee lassie from
Cumbernauld
. You’re way out of your depth here, with people you can’t begin to understand. I’d thought maybe you and me…’ he tailed off. ‘Och, I can’t do this. I’m sorry, Alison, cheerio.’

He walked out and banged the door behind him.

I tried to calm the dogs. I got their food bowls out and filled them. The dogs were gobbling the food as quickly as I could put it out, Josep obviously hadn’t fed them properly and as I was refilling the bowls there was another knock at the door.

I listened.

‘Alison!’

Ewan again, he’d come back. He’s said some horrible things but at least he’d realised how much I needed him. He would help me get out of this mess, he was a good guy after all, I always knew he was. This time as I opened the door he rushed at me, but it wasn’t Ewan.

Before I knew what was happening there was a knife at my throat and I was being dragged by the hair around the flat. Juegita growled and barked. He kicked Juegita when she tried to jump on him, the pups yelped but stayed at a distance. He seemed to be checking that there was no one else in the flat and led me into every room, Juegita and pups following as we went. In the kitchen he closed the door and trapped the dogs there before shoving me into the living room. At the front door I’d only got a brief glance but once I was thrown back on the sofa I knew him, no doubt about it.

It was Sanj.

He was alive, his face was ugly and swollen like a Halloween lantern but he was very much alive and threatening to slit my throat. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

‘Oh Sanj, I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m sorry for what we did; it all got out of hand. Sorry, muchas sorry.’

‘
Dame la coca
!’ he screamed.

And now it all became clear to me: coca, cocaine. Charlie, Ewan had said. I’d thought he’d meant my brother, Charlie. He’d been talking about cocaine, of course, Sanj’s cocaine, or more specifically, Mahmood’s. The bag of coke in Sanj’s kitchen cupboard, Chloe must have taken it. She must have stuffed it in her bag while I was punching seven shades of shite out of Sanj. But he was alive. This changed everything.

I wasn’t a murderer after all, the police weren’t after me. I didn’t have to stay in the flat, except that now, with the point of Sanj’s knife pressing on my throat, I kind of did.

‘
Donde estan las drogas? Dame las! Yo voy a matarte
!’

I couldn’t be a hundred per cent certain but I was pretty sure that what he was saying was something along the lines of: where are the drugs, give me the drugs, I’m going to kill you.

‘I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.’ I held my hands out in an I-wish-I-could-be-more-helpful gesture but this didn’t help. Sanj pressed the knife closer.

‘Chloe took it,
mi amiga
, Chloe, took your coca!’

Sanj’s rage turned to despair. He looked dumbfounded, like he didn’t know what to do now. Maybe Uncle Mahmood was going to kill him if he didn’t get the coke back. Sanj was desperate, maybe capable of desperate things.

‘
Donde esta
Chloe?’

‘She left, she went out with her dad, they went for lunch but that was hours ago, I don’t know if they’re coming back.’

I could see that he didn’t understand but I didn’t know the Spanish words so I kept saying the same thing.

‘She’s gone, I don’t know if she’s coming back.’

‘
Dame la coca, buscala
!’ he shouted at me, pulling me off the couch on to my knees. He pushed my head under the coffee table and then I understood that he wanted me to search for it.

I’d already searched the flat earlier, I hadn’t found any cocaine, but I was in no position to argue. I went through the motions of searching everywhere I could think of. The knife was hampering the search. It was hard to get Sanj to understand I wasn’t trying to escape, that I was trying to lead him to the next place to search. Leaning into the back of the cupboard was tricky and required trust on both sides, Sanj trusting me that I wasn’t reaching for a weapon and me trusting him that he wouldn’t panic and push the blade into my neck.

At the same moment we both heard it. Sanj pulled me in front of him. There was someone at the front door. Keys jangled in the lock.

Sanj held me tight from behind, the knife blade resting on my throat, a warning not to cry out as we both listened to someone enter and move around the flat. In the kitchen the dogs were still barking, making it difficult to hear. It sounded like only one person, a light-footed person who knew their way around. If it was Chloe, where was her dad?

‘Alison?’

Chloe walked into the bedroom.

Despite the strange scenario: her best friend held prisoner by a reputed dead man, Chloe showed no surprise.

‘Hi Sanj, you’re looking well.’

She must have known he wasn’t dead and yet she’d let me torture myself.

‘
Donde esta mi coca
?’ yelled Sanj, his battered face distorted with rage.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

Sanj responded to this by swirling the weapon in front of my face before putting it back on my neck.

‘Go ahead,’ Chloe said, waving her arm to signify that if Sanj wished to sink it into my windpipe he should go for it.

‘Chloe, don’t wind him up. He’s losing it, he could stab me, he’s come close already, don’t try to bluff him.’

‘I’m not.’

There were a few issues I wanted to raise with Chloe, but right at that moment what was most pressing was that she didn’t
encourage
Sanj to slit my throat.

‘Chloe, please, talk to him in Spanish, calm him down. And for God’s sake give him back his coke.’

Sanj was pushing me forward towards Chloe and screaming a torrent of Spanish, his voice a high-pitched hysterical scream.

‘Okay, okay. I’ll give him it,’ said Chloe, holding her hands up.

‘Tell him! In Spanish!’ I yelled.

‘Vale, vale! Venga, yo la tengo! Mira.’

This calmed him and Chloe turned and walked out the bedroom. Sanj pushed me forward and we shuffled out into the hall, where Chloe was waiting.

She lunged at him, punching his already well-pummelled face and catching him under the chin. This winded him momentarily but not long enough for him to let go of me. She grabbed his knife arm and did manage to pull it back six or seven inches away from my neck, but as he shook her off his arm sprung back and the knife sliced through my skin. Suddenly I was watching my blood pour on to the floor and trying to catch my breath. The fighting ceased.

Nothing made sense. I was covered in blood but when I tried to staunch the flow my neck felt intact.

‘It’s your ear, he’s cut your ear,’ Chloe said, pointing to a piece of pink flesh on the floor.

As we all looked down Sanj released his grip on me and grabbed Chloe in a headlock.

‘Donde esta my coca
?’ he screamed.

‘Okay, okay, I’m getting it!’

I picked up my piece of ear. They’d be able to sew it back on at the hospital but I’d have to freeze it or something. Lucky the dogs were still in the kitchen or one of them might have gobbled it up by now. Sanj and Chloe were shouting at each other. Maybe if I put it in milk. I had to do that right now.

They were screaming at each other and Sanj was shouting my name as he dragged Chloe through the living room, out the patio doors, on to the terrace. He was shouting and gesturing and I had to go out there too. Reluctantly I followed.

Once we go out there Sanj kept shouting at me but I didn’t understand what he wanted.

‘The coke’s in the chimney. He wants you to get it out.’

‘Or what?’ I asked.

‘Or he’ll cut my throat.’

I caught Sanj’s eye and waved my arm magnanimously. ‘Go ahead, Sanj, be my guest.’

‘He won’t do it. I’ve already invited him to kill me, he’s chicken,’ Chloe said sadly.

Chloe was full of surprises. In a fast manoeuvre she grabbed Sanj’s arm with both of hers. But she didn’t push it away. Instead she lunged at it, trying to impale herself on the knife. I realised then what a mad bitch she truly was. I’d always known she was crazy but I never thought she’d commit suicide just to get her own way. And she would have, if Sanj hadn’t been stronger.

They tussled over the knife until eventually he managed to pull it out of her hands. He sprang away from her as if she was diseased.

Sanj rushed up the ladders to the chimney. Chloe screamed as one by one he wrenched her four ceramic crowns off and threw them on the terrace floor where they smashed into sharp pieces. She shrieked and sunk her teeth into her own hand.

‘You filthy fucking bastard fucker!’ she screamed.

Sanj had torn off a poly bag that had been taped to the inside of the chimney. Still ten feet off the ground up the ladders, he checked the contents of the bag. At the same moment Chloe and I rushed to the bottom of the ladders, Chloe in an attempt to topple him, and me to stop her.

While I tried to pull her away Chloe heaved and kicked. I weighed more, I should have been stronger, but I wasn’t a
foam-mouthed
lunatic like she was. We struggled and Chloe managed to break loose from me. She rushed at the ladders and gave them a fierce push. I ran after her but it was too late. The ladders rocked from foot to foot and then shifted, sliding down the wall. We watched as Sanj plummeted through the air. As he fell he brought lots of mosaic pieces, a windfall of yellows and blues and greens all around us. His face hit the ground first, bursting his nose like a peach while his hips and ribs smashed into the terrace.

I ran to him and crouched down beside him. Maybe I was going to face a murder rap after all, but he moved and then lay twisted and groaning. Chloe walked across the terrace to her tool bag and came back with her hammer. Standing over Sanj and me, she lifted it high. She was planning to bring it down on his head. I pushed my hands against her hips and threw her off balance. She ran forward a few steps and once she regained her balance, she turned to come back. I was ready to run, to leave Sanj to his fate if she turned on me, but it was as if she didn’t even see me. She was only interested in battering Sanj.

Sanj was dragging himself along the terrace on his knees but he wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. He wouldn’t be able to get away from her. Screaming in pain he rolled on to his side and pulled himself on to his feet. To give him a chance of escape I stood in Chloe’s path. I noticed that, miraculously, one of her precious ceramic crowns was still intact and so to distract her I lifted it and handed it to her. Meanwhile Sanj hobbled out the flat with his bag of cocaine as quickly as his beat up bones would carry him.

As we heard the door bang closed Chloe dropped the
indestructible
crown, which rolled away harmlessly, and crumpled. She sat with her legs splayed out in front of her like a rag doll, staring at the rubble. Without its fancy crowns the chimney looked like a ruined fairy tale castle.

‘He destroyed my chimney!’ she wailed.

I waited until she’d stopped crying, which was quite a few minutes, before I spoke. I wanted her full attention.

‘You’re seriously bonkers, Chloe,’ I said, ‘you need locking up.’

‘No I don’t,’ she smiled.

‘I’m deadly serious, you’re mentally ill, you need help. You would have killed him.’

‘I knew you’d stop me,’ she shrugged.

‘Why is it my responsibility? I wasn’t there to stop you when you murdered Bashed Head Boy!’

Chloe giggled, ‘You think I killed the boy in Raval?’

‘I know you did. And not only did you murder him but you tried to set me up for it!’

‘You’re crazy,’ she laughed.

‘No, you’re crazy, but you think you’re very clever. You dragged me away from the scene and cleaned me up trying to make me look guilty. You told me not to go to the police. Now I understand why: me covered in blood in front of all those witnesses and then running away. The police were bound to think it was me.’

Chloe held her hands up, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, first off I didn’t murder anybody. And second: if I’d murdered him and framed you, why would I have you move in here with me?’

‘I don’t know. Guilty conscience?’

‘But if I was a murderer I’d be kinda stupid to get involved with the chief suspect, wouldn’t I? That might lead the police straight to me. Think about it Alison, it doesn’t make sense.’

‘But nothing makes sense with you, Chloe. You let me think we’d murdered Sanj!’

‘Did I
say
we’d murdered Sanj?’

‘No, but you let me think it. I was going out of my mind. Did you think that was funny?’

‘Come on, it was a little bit funny.’

‘No Chloe, it wasn’t. It was really fucked up.’

‘You knew I did stuff like that. You knew from the start.’

‘I knew you were cruel to Lisa and Lauren but why me?’

Chloe didn’t answer; instead she asked me a question.

‘How did you get the dogs back from Josep?’

‘What? Ewan picked them up.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘See? I told you not to pick up the dogs. I knew Mahmood’s people would be looking for us. That must be how Sanj found us,
Esmeralda
.’

She said the word Esmeralda in a teasing, playful tone.

‘And you hid my phone! You told me you lost it, you lied and I can prove it!’

‘Honey, we’ve all lied. You stole my underwear, you even stole my money. Did I give you a hard time?’

‘Chloe, this isn’t a game. I can’t take this any more. It’s
dangerous
for me.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s right. Your heart attack,’ she sneered.

‘What about my heart attack?’

She smirked.

‘Are you saying you made that up? I saw the report from the hospital. It said a heart attack.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Chloe, please. Stop fucking with me. This is important. Please just tell me the truth now. I won’t mind if you lied, but it’s really important that I know the truth. Did I have a heart attack?’

‘And you won’t be mad with me?’

‘No,’ I said, tasting the bile in my throat, ‘I won’t be mad with you.’

‘You didn’t have a heart attack. It seemed like you wanted to have a heart attack. I made ‘em do all the tests, but no, you didn’t.’

I kept my voice calm.

‘And college? We were going to go to Berkeley, weren’t we?’

‘That was why you stayed with me, isn’t it? That was what you wanted.’

‘Just tell the truth, Chloe.’

‘No,
you
tell the truth! That was why you stayed with me, isn’t it?’

Without hesitation I replied.

‘Yes.’

She didn’t answer my question immediately. She didn’t have to. I knew now that going to college in the States was never going to happen. It had just been another hook in my mouth.

‘Probably not,’ she said wistfully. ‘Maybe sometime, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if I could trust you.’

‘So you were testing me.’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘Telling me I’d had a heart attack and letting me think I’d murdered Sanj; that was your way of testing our friendship?’

‘Hey, it’s not my bad if you’re paranoid. You’re free to think whatever you want. We have fun, don’t we?’

‘No, Chloe, we don’t,’ I said.

‘Now who’s not telling the truth?’

‘You call this fun? You’re dangerous, Chloe! You’ve used me; you’ve made me fucking miserable. Can you not see what you’ve done?’

‘But it’s fine now, isn’t it? Your heart’s a-pumping. Sanj is alive and well and, thanks to you, he’s got his coke back. Juegita and the pups are home. No harm, no foul, huh?’

She was right. Everything was back to normal but when she mentioned my heart a-pumping it began to pump faster and faster.

‘You don’t even care what you’ve done to me, what you’ve put me through. The only thing you care about is that fucking chimney.’

Adrenaline flooded my system and tingled in my spine. With every breath I took I felt my body fill up with rage. I was a balloon filled to bursting point.

‘Give me that,’ said Chloe, taking the piece of my ear from me. ‘I’ll put it in the freezer. We’ll need to put antiseptic on the wound.’

When she came back she stood with the TCP in her hand, open-mouthed at what I’d done.

‘Now do you get it, Chloe?’ I yelled. ‘Now d’you see how much you’ve hurt me? This is the only way to get through to you!’

I bashed the hammer again into the crack I’d made in the chimney. The tiles had come off and I was through the plaster to the bare bricks.

Chloe ran at me and delivered a flying kick. She missed completely and fell back. I hit into the chimney again, the force of the thud of the hammer making the muscles in my arm quiver with the effort.

‘See? It’s not funny now, is it?’ I screamed as she scrambled to her feet.

She jumped on my back and put her arm around my neck, trying to choke me. She couldn’t stop my arm without releasing her chokehold and I managed to land another two blows to her precious chimney before she pulled me over and threw me to the ground. My arm was weak with hitting the chimney and it was easy for her to take it from me. She lifted the hammer out of my hand and lifted it above me.

Everything went dark. The event I had spent my life waiting for, the sensation I had anticipated so many times was here. I was dying. It was dark and there was pain, but inside the pain, at the very root, there was bliss. In the dark, the pain and the bliss were so intense
they merged and made a euphoric, excruciating high-pitched buzz. A flat line. A flat line that stretched on and on without end.

It didn’t last.

The bliss was the first to go.

My head hurt, my arms and legs too. I couldn’t move. I was weighed down by something soft and something hard. The soft thing was Chloe’s body, which lay motionless on top of me. The hard thing, that held us both down, was the crushing weight of the collapsed chimney.