Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (33 page)

He's helpless and pathetic, stuck here in bed trying not to blubber from the pain.

265

C H A P T E R 2 3

He can't even rebel properly and make things difficult.

Valentine's hand is cold on his forehead, from carrying a glass of water.

"You hungry?" he says. Lindsay pretends he can't hear, and knows that Valentine knows he can. The kid sighs. "Alright, starve yourself to death, see if I care. I can drive your Jag when you're dead, you can't stop me when you're six feet under."

"
Don't
touch my car," he snaps, and feels like an idiot for giving in so easily.

"You have to eat. Is that what you're sulking for? I'm sorry I teased. I
like
your belly, don't go all anorexic on me." He nicks an earbud to have a listen, and screws his face up like he's been poisoned. "The fuck's this?"

"Music."

"You

sure?"

"Get

out."

"Can't. Nana gave us a right telling-off cos me and Ty were fighting, so he ain't allowed out the living room and I ain't allowed in. I ain't crossing her, she'll break me like a twig."

"Shut up, then."

There's no way of getting comfortable, nothing helps. He grits his teeth when Valentine sits on the bed, trying to breathe and control himself through the jolting of the mattress.

"You need it changing yet, or is it okay?"

"It's fine, leave me alone."

"You ain't been picking at it?"

"I

said
it's fine!" He's sweating again. He can feel his heartbeat more in his shoulder than in his actual heart, bang-bang-bang, maddening and agonising.

"No it ain't fine," Valentine mutters, but he doesn't push it. He just brushes Lindsay's hair off his forehead and puts his cool hand there again like

266

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

he's trying to be soothing, but Lindsay feels more restless than ever. He yanks his iPod away after a minute and throws it viciously down the bed so it skims off the edge and lands with a light thud on the carpet. It's not enough. He wants to break something, or hit somebody, but now Valentine's moving his fingers down Lindsay's arm and he just can't find the energy to pull away.

"Don't touch me."

Of course the kid pays no notice. "You ever gonna tell me about your scars, then?"

"I've donated a lot of blood." It sounds lame even to himself, and Valentine smiles a bit but he doesn't look amused, just kind of sad.

"Bullshit," he says gently. "And I'll tell you how I
know
it's bullshit. Few years ago my mum was in hospital cos she got in a fight and they were doing a blood drive thingy, like getting visitors to donate while they were there, so I thought yeah, okay, I'm in, ain't nothing really, is it? So I filled in my form, but the nurse was all 'Sorry, we don't want
your
blood!' cos I ticked yes for 'have you ever had sex with a man'. And then I got scared cos everybody else'd wanna know why I wasn't going through with it, so the nurse felt sorry for me and helped me pretend I got all giddy when I saw the needle and all the bags and tubes and stuff, then my dad picked on me for ages for being a big fucking girl.

You ain't
allowed
to give blood, cos benders all have AIDS lurking up their arse.

That's the actual rules."

"Leave me alone." How can he be
this restless
and
this tired
at the same time?

"No. I wanna stay with you, if I ain't allowed to bring you painkillers or nothing."

"Who says you're not allowed to bring me painkillers?"

"Everybody."

At least he'll be clearheaded enough to properly plot their murders, he thinks. They've done this before. They came round his house when he broke his 267

C H A P T E R 2 3

arm the other year and cleared him out of paracetamol, as if that's going to do anything anyway. It's like having two extra mothers – and it's the sheer fucking
hypocrisy
that gets him most. Okay, so they never really went for the speedballing, at least not the way he did, but it's not like they weren't right there with him in the airfields and warehouses, full to the brim with pills and throbbing beats, hypnotised by lasers. Maybe something shows on his face, because Valentine bends his head to kiss the needle scars, tickling Lindsay's clammy skin with his hair and his soft lips.

"They're only trying to help. Just... nobody wants you getting all fucked up again, you know?"

"It was a long time ago." Not much more than four years, really, since he was so gagging for a hit at a ghastly family party that he actually used the cord of his mother's hairdryer to tie off because he couldn't take the time to find anything better. He forced himself clean after that, when he was sober enough to feel guilty. "I'm a big boy, I can handle it."

"Yeah, and Olly's brother thought he could handle it too, even when he shrunk down like a shrivelled little fucking raisin, even after he done time for it and everything, he thought he could handle it and all til he got his girlfriend killed with a dodgy mix."

He could bust out crying. He hates,
hates
, not being in control. It's even worse than the pain, worse than the itching. "You're missing the point, you absolute fucking
idiot
. Are you blind? I've been
shot
, I took
your fucking bullet
, and you're offering me a fucking
Anadin
?"

"Fuck off, do I
look
like a qualified nurse? You can have what Nana brings you, I ain't getting into it, I dunno what's safe."

"What's wrong with you?"

Now Valentine looks like he's about to cry too. "Nothing. Just... I'm scared, alright?"

"What the hell for?"

268

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

"I dunno. Everything. You never tell me nothing, I just find out all this shit about you from other people and they're
always always
gonna know you better than I do and it ain't fair. I thought you were
dying
, them fucking Catholics out there even had a priest round and everything."

"...Yeah, that was probably Ty's
uncle
round for a cup of tea, wasn't it?"

"Even so! You don't know how fucking horrible it was. It's alright for you, you were sleeping through it all." His special brand of logic again.

"If you loved me you'd fetch me something," Lindsay says suddenly.

He feels like shit after that, even worse having to watch and listen to Valentine storming across the room in furious tears, yelling, "You
wanker
!" at him and slamming the door so hard the noise rings in his ears.

Back to the silence and the boredom, back to being looked after by a no-nonsense old woman he's always been a bit afraid of. It's days before the kid's back, standing there in the doorway and leaning against the frame with a cup of something that smells wonderful.

"You forgiven me yet for whatever it was you probably thought you had to forgive me for?" he asks, all badly-calculated fake composure and pleading, hopeful eyes.

"Suppose

so."

I'm sorry. I'm sorry
. Two words. So easy, right? "What's that?"

"Soup. Dunno what's in it, lamb and some veg. You hungry?"

"Famished."

"Alright." He drags the chair close to the pillow end of the bed, and helps Lindsay sit up a bit with the cup. "You feeling better?"

"Getting there. How's life outside the barbed wire?"

He shrugs, lopsided with only one shoulder. "Nana's teaching me how to cook and stuff to pass the time. Cos I'm gonna have to look after you when we leave."

269

C H A P T E R 2 3

"I don't need looking after."

"Yeah. Do you even know how long it's gonna be before you can use that arm proper again? I got in your account and emailed your mum to tell her we're on holiday, too, so's she don't go round the house and worry cos we've disappeared. I didn't know what you'd want me to say. We can make up something later."

He can remember that creeping feeling, too definite just to be called a suspicion, that his mum knows a lot more than she's been told anyway. He wonders whether now's a good time to have it all out or whether they should carry on this charade of innocence, but all he says is, "Like she's going to fall for it.
I
don't write emails in textspeak."

"I used a spellchecker and everything, so shut up!"

He doesn't really feel like the soup now he's got it, he just warms his hands on the cup and breathes in the steam.

"What do you wanna do?" Valentine says after a minute, quiet. "Nana says you're allowed up if you want. You wanna go home?"

Thinking about all the questions and answers they'll have to navigate back in their nosy provincial seaside town makes him feel a bit sick.

"Not

really."

"No, me neither." He reaches out to smooth Lindsay's hair back off his forehead again. "You wanna go to France, like we said?" he asks, far too lightly to be as nonchalant as he sounds, and suddenly everything makes sense.

270

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

When Valentine comes in from shopping, somehow managing to open the door with his hip because his hands are full, he's like a walking, talking stereotype in a blue stripy t-shirt, clutching a couple of bursting paper bags.

There's a baguette sticking out the top of one. He's singing the Marseillaise, but it's the Simpsons version because he doesn't know the real words; his French is limited to hello and goodbye and some filthy phrases he likes to whisper in Lindsay's ear at inappropriate times because he knows it gets him hard.

("Baise-moi si j'ai tort," he said one time, not long after Lindsay decided he felt well enough to make the move, slipping it casually into conversation like it was a perfectly natural thing to do, "mais tu veux m'enculer, ici, maintenant, sur le table. Oui?"3 His accent is impeccable, he rolls his r's and deep-throats his vowels like a native. He's got an ear for accents the way he's got an eye for painting, he's just shit at remembering words unless there's a good reason to. Ty and Danny were there with them that weekend, all raised eyebrows and questioning looks because they can't speak French either. Lindsay just glared at 3 Fuck me if I'm wrong, but you want to bugger me right here and now over the table. Right?

271

C H A P T E R 2 4

him. Later on he fucked him with his fingers because it still hurt too much to put any proper force into it – yes, over the table. He still doesn't know where the kid learned to talk like that. He blames the internet. Thanks it, sometimes, when Valentine wakes him in the middle of the night purring soft obscenities into his ear.)

He blows Lindsay a kiss and heads into the kitchen, edging carefully around bits of furniture with his bursting bags. "You know," he calls, "when you said 'house in France', I've gotta admit, I was kinda thinking Paris or something, not the middle of fucking nowhere."

Lindsay wonders why he's got his hair in two stubby little messy plaits tied off with gingham ribbon, but doesn't want to ask in case it was a trick of the light or a momentary hallucination and he sounds like a headcase.

"It's supposed to be a hideout," he says instead. "You can't hide in Paris, it's full of... fucking council-estate Da Vinci Code tourists looking for a mystery to solve, isn't it?"

"And," Valentine goes on, as if Lindsay didn't speak at all, "when I said I'd be your wife I kinda meant you can chain me to your bed and do me six ways to Sunday, not make me run round doing all the shopping and washing and shit."

"It's good character-building stuff," Lindsay calls back, and hears the kid snort a little laugh.

"Yeah, right. You're just a lazy fucking pig."

"I'm convalescing! I've seen how hard you shop. No strenuous activity, you know what the doctor said."

"No more blowjobs for you, then, matey."

"Oh, come on."

"Fuck

off!"

He's laughing, though. Lindsay can hear him banging around in there, putting things away, the hob-top kettle starting to boil, mugs and spoons clinking, that idiotic song starting up again. It's funny how accustomed he's

272

S T O C K H O L M S Y N D R O M E

become to constant noise – tapping feet or fingers, humming, whistling, aggravating knuckle-cracks, whatever. The kid's a fidget. It's annoying as hell, but he's been out for over two hours and the silence was getting so suffocating he couldn't concentrate on his book and had to go and open the back doors for some fresh air. It's hot and sticky out, for autumn, but there's still snow on the mountains, jarringly stark against the cloudless sky.

"You took your time. Thought you were just getting a bit of food?" He closes his bookmark between the pages and just stretches out, watching the ripple of breeze-blown fields between the garden and the mountains, listening to the clatter in the kitchen.

"I got ambushed! That little girl from the next place over."

"Aurelie."

"Yeah, Aurelie, she made me play hopscotch, then she made me play hairdressers, and I was like... err, don't think so, but I kinda had to, it ain't fair, poor kid. I said I'll cut my hair off and she can have it if she wants, we can make her a little me-wig or something, but she said no thanks. Couldn't understand why, my hair's brilliant. S'pose cos it ain't blonde. She's got
some
, it's just dead short. Cute, though, she's like a little pageboy. How long's it take to grow back, after chemo? Anyway, her mum and dad come out, I thought they were gonna duff me in for being a paedo or something but they said we're going round for dinner tomorrow, if you want? I mean,
you
can. I've got a better invitation, I'm going to a dolls' tea party. I think. She ain't that good at English. She's pretty good at mime, though. I think I'm meant to take Mister Bollo but he'll want a bath first, he's a bit grubby. Can't put him in the washing machine, he'll fall to bits."

"You're mad. No skiving off your wifely duties, you'll come to dinner with the grown-ups."

"Yeah, but they ain't
my
friends, they're yours. You'll all talk French, I ain't just sitting there like a lemon looking pretty."