‘Talk about your dream come true,’ Marshall says.
One of my earphones has slipped out of my ear, so his voice wakes me up. I lift my head – sleeping sitting up has etched many kinks into my muscles and moving even slightly has fired up several of my pain centres. It aches again to lower my legs, to turn to face the man who has spoken to me. His face crinkles up with such an affectionate smile that it takes my breath away. No one has ever smiled at me like that.
‘How do you mean?’ I ask him.
‘I’ve been thinking about you all day, and I come home and there you are waiting for me. I didn’t think I’d ever get that far into your life where you’d sit and wait for me.’
Instead of replying, I take the other earbud out, cut off Boyz II Men’s ‘I Swear’ mid-chorus and slowly wind the wires around the music player.
‘Ahh, another of my famous conversation-killers.’
‘It’s been a long day,’ I say to him. ‘I wanted to see you, that’s all. If it’s not convenient …?’
‘At what point did you get “not convenient” from what I said?’ he jokes. ‘I wanted to see you, was wondering how long I’d have to leave it after spending so much time with you and the other Veronica, and now you’re here. All very convenient for me.’
‘And it’s not a bit creepy for you, especially since you’ve got someone else who’s always turning up?’
‘No, it feels nothing like that.’
‘I’m not really up for … you know. I was hoping we could maybe talk?’
‘That’s cool. Totally cool. I have some stuff to tell you, anyway.’ Marshall lets go of his laptop bag and stands up. Once fully upright, he holds his hands out to me. My fingers slip easily, neatly, familiarly between his as he draws me upwards. I think of holding Roni’s hand while she told her parents the absolute truth about her life. Who she was, what she had to put up with, why she did some of the things she did. I remember the pain there was from holding her so tight. I could feel her slipping as she spoke and I had to cling on to her, hold her there so she didn’t stop speaking. I remember the moment of release, when her dad opened his arms to her and she went to him. I’m jealous. Why was she believed and me not? What is it about me that I have to carry this secret shame alone, no matter what I do?
Marshall holds on to my fingers a while longer, as though he knows I’m about to fall. What happened has tripped me up, made me fall when I didn’t think there was much that could do that now. I think of Reese’s hole and how I have my own one, how I am teetering so close to the edge of it, I need to cling on to the outer edge and stop myself slipping. If I fall back into wanting to be Grace Carter, I will not haul myself out of there again.
‘You want noodles?’ Marshall asks. He still has hold of my hands, staring into my eyes – he probably doesn’t realise he is keeping me from falling backwards.
‘Yeah, I can eat noodles.’ Yes, I can eat noodles. And I can pretend everything is normal for now.
‘Eliza fell of the wagon,’ Marshall tells me while he chops up vegetables in his kitchen area.
I am standing right beside him (I need to keep him close) while I roll a dirt-covered leek back and forth across the counter, listening to the fhap, fhap, fhap of his knife at work. It has a rhythm that is tranquillising, almost soporific. Every time I try to hook into its beat, though, he stops chopping and starts another vegetable. ‘Oh,’ I reply.
‘You don’t believe she was ever on the wagon, do you?’
I shake my head. ‘Not really, no.’
He stops what he’s doing and stands very still, his head to one side as he stares at the stainless-steel cooker hood. ‘Neither do I, if I’m honest.’ Fhap, fhap, fhap starts up again. ‘I was being pretty arrogant, telling myself I could help her and that one conversation would do it. She came over the other day and stole the new tablet I bought for my son’s birthday. This weekend he’s meant to be coming to stay for the week, and now I can’t give him his birthday present because she’s stolen it. Just took it right from under my nose. I couldn’t believe it. She denied and denied and denied it. Even tried to blame you by hinting I didn’t know you very well but I was letting you into my flat. It was only when I threatened to tell her parents and the police that she admitted it. Cried and cried, promised she’d pay me back because she’d sold it.’
‘When was this?’
‘Sunday night. She came over after I came back from yours, and by Monday night when I confronted her, she’d sold it. Then she tries to tell me she’s sold it because she’s lost her job. I mean, what the hell …?’ Marshall slams the knife down in frustration. ‘How did she even know where to sell it so quickly? It defies belief.’ He starts chopping again. ‘I can’t even think about her, let alone look at her. I’ve had my phone off all day. I actually thought she’d be sitting outside, not you.’
‘Did she tell you when she lost her job?’
‘No, although I should have guessed as she never had her pass to get into the building the last few times she’s come to work with me. I suppose it must have been before she went to visit her parents. This is so not what my life has been about so far. I don’t know how to deal with all of this.’
‘It’s hard when someone you care about is in that particular hole.’
‘Which leads me to ask how you knew? I meant to ask before but we’re not exactly known for talking.’
‘Well, Marshall, I know because one of the absolute loves of my life – not a boyfriend or anything like that – a friend who I adored was a smackhead. I call him that and it sounds disrespectful, and I should say heroin addict, but if I do that, I minimise what he was. I make it sound like he didn’t behave in some pretty appalling ways to get money to feed his habit.’ Marshall’s fhap, fhap, fhap stops again. I have been staring at the white tiles of his kitchen floor while I speak and now I look up to see him staring at me. He has shock on his face. No, not shock, shock is only fleetingly expressed. He has horror on his face. ‘But I loved him so much, you know. So I put up with it. I learnt to stop enabling him when it came to giving him money, but I couldn’t cut him off. He told me himself that me not cutting him off was probably one of the worst things I could do for him. I couldn’t, though, not until I had to.’ I couldn’t cut him off. Reese was my drug of choice. People who need me are my drug of choice. That’s what’s different about Marshall: he doesn’t need me in the same way that Roni always needed me, in the way that Reese needed me, in the way that Lori needed me.
Marshall puts down his knife, his cooking forgotten as he finds out more about me than he imagined. ‘Is he OK now?’ he asks.
The torment of that question claws through me and I have to close my eyes, centre myself before I can answer. ‘He’s probably dead.’ I say this out loud and it rips through me again. ‘I have no way of knowing for sure, but for various reasons, I think he’s gone.’
‘Jesus, that’s horrible. Can’t you find out?’
I shake my head. ‘No, I can’t. The thing of it is, Marshall, not so long ago, I used to be homeless. Reese, my friend, was someone I met when I was homeless and I can’t contact anyone from that life.’
‘I had no idea,’ Marshall says. ‘You always seem so unruffled; calm and together. I think that’s what unnerves Eliza – she can’t get to you like she has other women …’ He winces suddenly. ‘And you had to sit there and listen to Sebastian spouting on and on about homeless people and how unwanted they are. Jeez, I’m surprised you didn’t get up and lamp him one. I wanted to and I wasn’t even “out there”. I had no idea.’ He draws me into his arms. Roni was hugged like this by her father – she was held close by him when she needed him to. Marshall kisses the top of my head, holds me even closer.
‘You know what this means?’ Marshall says, after he has held me for a while.
‘No, what?’
‘We’re definitely more than just good sex now.’
‘I thought it was fantastic sex?’ I say to him. ‘Don’t be downgrading it.’
<
br /> ‘Just checking you were paying attention,’ he says. And if possible, tries to hold me even closer.
At 2 a.m. I creep out of Marshall’s flat. I’m not ready yet to stay over all night. He did ask me to stay, but I said I’d think about it. When he fell asleep I’d thought about it enough and I decided to go home, give myself some space to process what has happened in the last twelve hours: Roni has finally told me everything and I completely understand now why she lied to the police. Roni’s father has believed her without question and she is finally getting the support she needs.
And I have made love for the first time in my life. Marshall and I didn’t just have sex, we made love, we revealed our vulnerabilities to each other, were slow and considered; I’ve never felt myself in my body as I did tonight. I felt every caress, every kiss, every touch, every sigh, every moan, every stroke inside me. It scared me a little, how easy it was to let go with Marshall because none of it reminded me of anything else. Everything with him was new, respectful, equal and overloaded with pleasure. That was why he wanted me to stay, I think, he wanted to recreate that closeness and intimacy in the morning.
I need time away to process. To examine how tonight, I could step away from my past for a while and be with him without holding back. Those reservations and fears and terrors and reminders will return, I know that without a doubt. But tonight I was free of all that.
I almost scream at the figure sitting in the corridor opposite Marshall’s front door. I stand on Marshall’s welcome mat and stare at her, amazed that she can do this sort of thing and not see how crazy it is. She glares at the bra that is peeking out from the bundle of clothes and shoes in my arms.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she whispers.
‘Eliza, this is crazy.’
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she hisses.
‘OK,’ I say with a shrug. ‘I won’t.’ Well, really, what else am I going to say to someone as unstable as her?
19
Roni
London, 2016
I have been thinking. I have been thinking and thinking and thinking.
I have not been praying. Because I cannot pray about what I have been thinking. I have been thinking about revenge on Mr Daneaux. None of it seems very fair, none of it seems right. My uncle has disappeared. Dad has said he thinks he’s run off to Spain, but is determined to catch up with him if that is what I want. What I want is revenge on Mr Daneaux.
I should pray about it, I should turn these thoughts over to the Lord so that He can guide me, He can show me the way. But I am too angry for that. I am too angry for much of anything. I am angry and I am confused. Both emotions flow through me like co-running rivers; every so often the banks of one river will break and the breach will see wave after wave after wave of that emotion coursing through me, battering and flattening all other emotions and all other types of rational thought. Anger is the river that bursts most often.
Out of everyone, Dad is the person who has taken the brunt of most of my anger because, I suppose, I can talk to him. He will listen, he will hold me, he will tell me over and over again how sorry he is. He accepts what I have said to him: that he didn’t pay enough attention to my brothers and me. Damian and Brian have now both confessed how terrified they were of Uncle Warren, and have revealed the things he subjected them to when they were alone with him. Never anything like he did to me, but always stuff that was designed to ‘toughen them up’, to ‘teach ’em how to be a man’. A lot of the time they hid their injuries because they knew Mum would do nothing, she would more likely tell them off for causing a fuss than patch them up or berate our uncle. Dad struggles with the reality of what being married to a person like Mum has done to his children. He knew, he has admitted, that she was at times ambivalent towards us, and would sometimes step in to stop her, but he never dreamt this was what the result of being the ‘working’ parent would mean. Three days ago he told Mum he is divorcing her and that he is going to cite her failure to protect me in the list of unreasonable behaviours. He has also started searching for a new place to live because he cannot stand the thought of staying in this house with all that went on in it any longer.
I am angry with Mum, of course I am. But there doesn’t seem to be much point because everything, everything is all about her. In this whole thing, she is the victim, apparently. As she says: she did the best she could at the time for all of us and can we all stop making such a fuss about it now? She constantly demands to know what I am going to do about Mr Daneaux because if I go to the police, it’ll likely be in the papers and she can’t stand to be the mother of a girl in the papers who is accusing such a well-respected man of child abuse. What would people think of her? What would they think of the nice middle-class family that we were? If anyone brings up my uncle, she pretends they are not talking, she pretends that she doesn’t understand what they mean. She pretends away a fundamental part of my life and my anger seems to bounce off the shield she has erected around herself.
Nika is not answering the phone. I haven’t the energy to get down to Brighton to see her and from the fact her phone is almost permanently turned off, I know she is not interested in speaking to me anyway. She did what she promised to do – come with me – and now that promise has been fulfilled, she is not engaging with me any longer. I can’t blame her for that. It must have been so painful for her to see my father immediately believe me, immediately take me in his arms. She never had that. She has never had anyone stand up for her.
Which is why I am so angry with Mr Daneaux. Why I am thinking about revenge. He has hurt her and he has got away with it. He has hurt her and nothing is going to be done.
At least, with my uncle, his life as he knew it is over. He cannot come back here and carry on as normal. He lives with the threat of police over his head and he will never know when there will be a knock on the door coming to drag him back to face his crimes.
Uncle Warren causes the banks of my confusion river to regularly burst, too. He was nice to me in the midst of his abuse. He would buy me things, he would give me money, he would listen when I talked. And then he would do those awful things to me and I would be in pain, I would be scared, and then I would be confused about what to feel. He messed so much with my mind, made sure I adored him before he started to do what he did. Even then, it started off so slowly and carefully, half the time I wasn’t sure if what he was doing was wrong. Then when I knew it was wrong, I grew to hate him but I still liked him as well. He would often apologise afterwards, say he was sorry and didn’t mean it, and I would not know what to do. I almost told, so many times, but the thought of Damian’s bike, the blood I’d tried to clean up from his knee, his pale face as he’d tried to endure the pain, would appear in my mind and I would remember that Uncle Warren could and probably would hurt my brothers. I was so confused all the time, and I’m often confused now. As time goes on I’m less confused, more angry, more hateful of him.
And more hateful of Mr Daneaux.
I have been thinking about Mr Daneaux. And how I would like to get my revenge.
Nika
Brighton, 2016
‘Nika, I know you don’t want to talk to me, and I’m so sorry for everything. I have to put things right. I hope you listen to this message when you find out what I have done, and I hope you understand. I have to do this. It’s not fair that you don’t get justice, and you don’t get to have people believe you. If I do this, they’ll know what he was like and they’ll believe you. I have to do this. I … I love you. You’re the best friend I ever had. And I’m so sorry again for how I let you down.’
She won’t do it. No one actually does it. No one normal, anyway. We talk about it, we think about it, we tell ourselves about it, but we never actually do it. No matter how much we want to, we never actually do it.
I hit ‘1’ on the small keyboard of my phone to listen again to the message she left about an hour ago.
There is something … something in the inflection of her voice
, the melody of her words. If this were a song, I would be listening for how the words are arranged, how they flow with the harmony of her voice, what is missing as well as what is there. She speaks again in my ear and I listen to her.
‘1’, I press. What is it? What is it that is missing? Something is needling me, is stopping me believing that she will not do it. Something is missing from this arrangement of lyrics and tune, something vital that makes me more and more uneasy as the minutes pass by. God. What is missing is God. Every time I have spoken to her, there has been a mention of God, her faith, her belief in a higher power. She might think about doing this, but God would hold her back, her faith would hold her back. She speaks of justice, but not forgiveness.
She’s going to do it. Roni is actually going to do it.
Nika
Brighton, 2016
‘Do you ever wonder if you’ve lived the life you were meant to?’ I ask her.
She is at the top of the stone steps. They are etched with the filth of their years, could probably use a good hosing down and going over with a scrubbing brush. Roni is facing the red front door, and looks poised to press the bell, to start this process.
‘No,’ she says.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I reply. ‘Come on, tell me, do you ever wonder if you’ve lived the life you were meant to?’
She sighs, and dips her head. I bet she has screwed up her lips, has closed her eyes, is trying hard not to pray for the right answer. ‘Even if I do, what difference will it make?’
‘I used to think I hadn’t. I used to think that there was a life I should have lived and when I stopped being someone else, I could recapture it, restart it, whatever. Thing is, this is who I am. This is the life I was meant to live simply because it’s the one I have lived. When people used to tell me that being homeless wasn’t the life for me, I used to defend myself and say that it was. I never believed it, though. I kept thinking if I could scroll back a few years things would be different. To before I left London, before I met Todd, before I left Chiselwick, before I went to the police, before I told my parents. I kept “before-ing” myself, and what was the point? Truly, I have lived this life. It is mine, and mine alone. I am who I am because of every single thing that has happened to me. I can’t pretend I’m happy all the time, I can’t pretend I haven’t thought about ending it all more than once. But I am who I am. This is who I am. I don’t need justice.’