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  The bottle this chick had been drinking from reopened the split in her forehead as I brought it down hard, base first. She was out for the count again. She was splayed out in the shape of a murder victim. She only needed the white outline around her and she’d be set, complete with a bloodstained floor, to be on the front page of Federal Weekly.

  I fucked off out for a run.

  Later, I arrived back at my street, and the morning had turned into afternoon. As I walked down the road towards my tree-lined drive, I wondered whether or not the coppers would be there when I got past those trees. But no neighbours were out watching, the air didn’t feel bad. I rounded the first tree, and my house was the same as it was when I’d left it.

  Deep breath. Unlock the door. Step inside.

  The air was still, the tang of breakfast in the air. Warm, soothing.

  I went in the kitchen, and she was still there, just as I’d left her, chest rising slightly, her shallow breaths inflating her lungs. She was bruising. Her face, Christ, it was Play-Doh purple. A part of my mind knew this is wrong. I should be trying to help this kid up, get her awake instead of standing here surveying the scene with this warped fascination that seemed to have made itself at home inside me.

  I had to wake her, though. I must get her alert and see if she was playing the game. If she wasn’t, then it was back in the fucking larder for her until she did. This had to work.

  Filling a bowl with warm water, I dipped a tea towel into it and knelt beside her. I wrung out the cloth and wiped her face softly. It took a while, but the crusted blood came away eventually. She still didn’t look good, but a little better now, with just the bruises and the cuts.

  I opened her lips and squeezed the cloth so some water trickled into her mouth. It dribbled out again, down her chin, disappearing into a wet patch on her shirt. I wanted to talk to her like I did when I’d met her and chatted about Eminem.

  I played her music to see if that helped.

  Her eyelids fluttered.

  Her eyes, they were open now, focusing.

  Her gaze fixed on me.

  Then she started screaming.

  I held my patience. I did. I bit my tongue and pinned her arms down by her sides, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” loads of times until she stopped thrashing around, whimpering instead of screaming, and lay still, looking up at me.

  “Get up. Come on, I’ll help you up.”

  She was dead weight. She struggled to find purchase on the floor, her feet slipping on the water from the upturned bowl. I even took the fact that she’d kicked the bowl over and made a mess in stride.

  She stood, a hunched stray dog, and stared at me, tried to speak. She only managed to croak, though, her throat sore from all that noise, I reckoned. I led her to the sink, and it took some time because she shuffled, small steps, as though she was some kind of broken bird.

  She leaned against the counter while I filled a plastic beaker. I gave her a drink. She sipped it at first and soon took bigger gulps.

  “Sip. Go back to sipping.”

  And she did.

  With the beaker empty, she placed it in the sink and stood with her hands down by her sides, looked at me and said, “Please may I have a bath?”

  I let it go that she’d asked me instead of waiting for me to offer. I was going to offer one anyway. I was.

  I wanted to punish her and didn’t know why.

  I wanted to love her and knew why.

  “Yes, you can. But I have to come in the bathroom with you.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, lips parting, but she didn’t say anything for a moment, just stared at me. I saw her mind working like I had the night I’d snatched her, saw her brain filtering her options, showing her which way to go. Her instinct was taking over.

  She hung her head and sucked in a ragged breath, sighed, and whispered, “Okay.”

  Now, I guessed I could come across as a pervert, sitting on the closed toilet seat while some eighteen-year-old girl had a bath, but it wasn’t like that. She peeled her jeans off, her bottom half caked in her own shit, inner thighs red from urine burns, her head battered.

  “I think if you get the shower head down, you should wash off as much of that crap as you can, then have a bath.”

  She nodded, my broken bird. Was she sorry for herself or accepting of what had happened? I wasn’t quite sure yet. Couldn’t work out if she was back to basics or if she was being as manipulative as Mags would have been in the same situation. You know: Let the silly bastard think you’re doing as you’re told, then when he lets down his guard, fucking run for it, girl. Go on, run as fast as you can. Tell the police, get this sick fuck locked up, let them throw away the key…

  Fuck off, Mags.

  Okay, so now my guard was up a little more. Until I knew what she was up to.

  While she showered herself down, picked off the obstinate bits of shit, I opened the window a crack. The bath filled, and her nose bled—probably the heat from the water. She lurched forward, as though about to faint, and blood splashed onto the wall tiles, streaking down, red tears.

  “Steady there.”

  She managed to stand still.

  “You can add some bubbles if you want.”

  She chose Matey. Most children used it; it made the water turn blue, or it had when I’d been a kid. I hadn’t been allowed it. Too expensive, Mags had said.

  While the broken bird stood shivering in the bath, hands clasping opposite elbows, while the water rose past her ankles, she looked down on the blue water, those thick bubbles, and she cried. Maybe she had always wanted Matey in her bath, too. Perhaps we were destined to be together, united with a common bond. I didn’t ask what was wrong in case it was the bubble bath.

  Because then I’d cry.

  And I couldn’t allow that.

  She reclined with her eyes closed. At one point, she opened them, seemed puzzled, then raised her hand to her head and rubbed the stubble, took a shuddering breath, and then let her hand slide back down beneath the bubbles. Her eyes were wet, but not from the water, her bottom lip quivering ever so slightly. She was probably thinking, ‘My hair’s gone. My lovely hair.’

  While she soaped herself, seemingly unfazed by the fact I was sitting there with her, I tried to think of what to say, what we could talk about.

  “I’ll make you some food when you’re done, if you like.”

  She wanted to say no, I knew it. Wanted to punish me, get sulky like teenagers did, throw the offer back in my face. But she couldn’t. She had to be so hungry, probably hurting hungry, like her guts were being squeezed by unseen hands, twisted into fists and wrenched about inside her.

  So she said, “Please.”

  She smiled, the corners of her mouth lifting a little, though she didn’t look at me. She hadn’t glanced my way since we’d been in the kitchen. She kept her eyes forward, staring into space, at images only she could see. Ones I could only imagine.

  If I were in her place, I’d be thinking of revenge.

  I’d have to be careful. She might well be entertaining thoughts of hurting me, getting hold of a knife, hacking and slicing.

  Slicing reminded me of Mags and that time with the glass. I’d been at school that day and had come home with a bag full of homework, my rucksack so heavy my shoulder should have been dented. I’d put my bag down on the floor and was going to hang it up once I’d draped my coat on the hook, but Mags flew at me in one of her rages.

  “Put that fucking bag away. I’m sick and tired of you leaving your shit out for me to tidy up, for me to sort out. Pick it up, come on, do it, now. Now!”

  I didn’t have time to get the bag immediately or as quickly as she wanted it done. She took a fistful of my hair, dragged me over to the kitchen sink, and slammed my forehead down on the stainless-steel edge, once, twice, three times. Three fucking times. The banging dislodged a glass from the drainer, sent it toppling into the sink where it cracked in half lengthwise; two long crescents rocking to and fro, babies’ cra
dles.

  She lifted my head by the hair again, picked up one of those crescents with her other hand, and sliced it across my cheek.

  It bled a lot. When she saw the blood, she let go of my hair and shoved me backwards with force, as if by getting me away from her it meant she hadn’t done it and it wasn’t her who had lost her temper. But it was her, and we both knew it.

  It went without saying, after she’d cleaned me up, staunched the flow of blood, that I’d said to those who asked that I’d fallen, scratched my face on a thorny bush, a nail, whatever. Anything other than what had really happened.

  So, as my broken bird soaked in the bath now, her gaze on the ceiling, looking up with what appeared to be intent interest in the swirling aertex patterns, I knew I had to be careful because she probably had a wily mind just like Mags had.

  “You’d better be getting out now. Wrap up in this towel. You can come to my room, borrow some of my jogging bottoms and a T-shirt.”

  She rose, water sloshing off her. She stood, facing me with her head down, arms across her breasts, purple face like a big blackberry on top of her neck. I placed the towel around her, and she gathered it under her chin and stepped out of the bath onto the fluffy mat.

  “This way.”

  She followed me into my room and dried herself tentatively between her legs—they were raw. She hid the wince well. Dressed in fleece-lined joggers that were too long plus too big in the waist, she put on my top and tied it in a knot at her midriff. She stood with her head down again, a naughty kid being chastised.

  She reminded me of what I must have looked like back then, when Mags was having a bad day and shouted down at me. A moment’s sorrow hit me, and I wanted to gather this girl up into my arms, say I was sorry and let her go, try to explain what I was doing, that I’d release her if she promised not to grass me up and tell on me.

  Images crowded in, a horde of football fans, all roaring for their team at once, all jeering and hooting. Laughing at me because I’d had this girl in my house for three days. Three days, and I didn’t even know her name.

  Chapter Three

  I imagined her to be a Sarah or an Alice, but her name was Harmony.

  It reminded me of the hairspray brand.

  She got dressed and followed me everywhere, watched as I cooked us a meal. I made us a steak with chips, peas, and half a grilled tomato each.

  “Your father left then, yes?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She sipped the water I’d allowed her, sat on a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar.

  “What did you feel, you know, when he set up home with someone else?”

  Does she wonder how I know?

  She sighed. “Nothing much.”

  “It didn’t hurt? Didn’t make you want to cry?”

  “A bit.”

  I recalled how I’d felt when Dad went. How I’d been left with Mags because Dad couldn’t cope with her anymore. About six months after she’d started that fucking new job, he’d walked out. They’d rowed about some bloke she’d got friendly with, and how Dad felt it didn’t help that she’d showed off her legs to all and sundry, that this guy probably read the signs she’d been giving him.

  Mags said she hadn’t given any signs, that it’d just happened, and Dad, you could see he didn’t believe that shit, didn’t believe anything that came out of her mouth anymore. When he’d walked out with one suitcase—that was all he’d got out of years in a relationship, one suitcase—my throat throbbed like a fucker, and I had to keep swallowing to ease the pain and scrunch my eyes up to stop the tears falling, shouting at myself to keep calm.

  Mags ranted and raved to the last, swearing at him as he took his case out into the hallway, kicked at it with her pointed shoe.

  “If you weren’t such a useless fuck, I wouldn’t have gone elsewhere. If you’d have complimented me, took me out, made me feel special, I wouldn’t have turned to Scott, would I?”

  Dad had glanced back at her when she’d mentioned the man’s name, as if him having a name made him more real, made Dad have to face up to the fact that Mags was with this Scott now and not him. Shit, that must have hurt. Now that I was a man I could see how much it would have killed him, but even as a kid, I’d sensed how bad it was. I mean, if he was hurting like I was…

  He’d turned away from us, walked from the house, and hadn’t looked back. Hadn’t even said anything to me. Hadn’t hugged me, mock-punched me, nothing. He’d just left.

  Mags had slammed the front door, cuffed me on the back of the head, and said, “Don’t you dare start snivelling, kid. Can’t believe he sodding well left you here. You’re the last thing I bloody need right now.”

  I supposed it was what I should have expected from her. She really didn’t like me, and I’d gone up to my room, head down, mouth shut, teeth hurting, hurting so bad because I was gritting them, my jaw rigid. I’d sat on my bed and told myself that when Dad spoke to me next, I’d ask him to take me away.

  The saddest thing was, I couldn’t do that, because he hadn’t contacted me again. The last time I’d seen him he was in a hospital bed, rigged up to tubes after he’d smashed his car into a brick wall trying to end it all and make the pain go away.

  So I didn’t quite believe Harmony when she’d said it only hurt a bit. Maybe she was kidding herself, hiding it away like I did, still do.

  We sat at the table, and she didn’t eat until I nodded at her plate. Picking up her knife and fork, trying to hide the fact that she wanted to scoff, scoff, scoff, she cut into her food.

  And then it took over—instinct. She sawed up her steak as though she had an entity inside her that came along all of a sudden, turning her from this quiet kid she’d just been to some kind of maniac. She filled her stomach, probably until the pain of hunger was replaced by another, different pain—that bloated, distended feeling you get at Christmas when you’ve eaten too much. She hiccoughed a few times, took a sip of water. I hadn’t quite finished my meal, had made up my mind earlier to save the best bit, my medium-rare, until last.

  She projectile vomited, and it landed on my plate.

  When my fork stayed stuck in her cheek, when the tines remained embedded, the handle bouncing, I realised I’d really hurt her. The reaction to lash out was instant; I’d had no time to think.

  Hand up at her cheek, she squealed, moved to pull the fork out but screamed when she touched it. She jumped up, saying, “Ohmygod! Ohmygod! Ohmygod!”

  I grabbed hold of her from behind in a rugby tackle. Snatched the fork out and bundled her into the larder and locked her in before she went totally apeshit on me.

  I leaned against the door with my back to it.

  She banged on it for a while then went silent.

  I was sure she whispered, “Why? Why?”

  I didn’t want to answer. She should know why.

  To calm myself, I poured a large whisky and drank it down. I wasn’t sure what the hell just happened, but I found myself flipping like that a lot. I’d tried so fucking hard to hold it all in, and once upon a time I could. Now, it spilled out of me when I least expected it. All the anger, frustration, and shit I felt just boiled over.

  I knew thinking about Mags and Dad and all that crap in the past was what set me off. They started in on me, and it was like I was being crowded with no space to call my own. I always had someone on at me in my fucking ear.

  Pouring another drink, I sat in the lounge to stare at the TV cabinet. I knew if I opened those doors, if I let myself watch something, it’d make me worse.

  I leaned my head back on the sofa and sat with my legs apart, closed my eyes, and tried to relax every part of my body from my toes to my hair roots. It worked until my watch bleeped the hour, and that bleep, that noise, triggered another scene in my mind.

  His face was wrinkly, the skin bunched up around the eyes. He didn’t look like my dad anymore, but I couldn’t say the truth, otherwise Mags would have given me one of her looks. Dad resembled one of those really old people they showed
on the news who had been beaten up. He had bruises on his face from the steering wheel when the car hit the wall.

  Before we’d gone to the hospital, Mags said, “I’ll have to go and see him, Scott. Take Wayne…before…”

  I’d been hiding behind the door, and my foot accidentally hit the wall.

  Scott popped his head round. “You been listening to something that’s none of your business, you little shit?” His face was red, and he clipped me round the ear. “Piss off out of it. Go upstairs or outside or something.”

  I wished it were him who was dying. They thought I didn’t know what was going on, but I did.

  Mags told Scott it’d get her out of a hole if ‘he popped his clogs.’

  So, we’d gone to see Dad in the hospital, and I sat on his bed staring at him. He really didn’t look the same.

  “When you get better, Dad, will you buy me another rabbit? We can go to the pet shop together, get his straw and everything.”

  He gave a little smile at that, but his eyelids went all funny, like they weren’t working properly. He blinked slowly. I wanted to cuddle him, but he smelled weird, and his hair was all wispy and not brushed back like it was the last time I’d seen him.

  Mags sat on the other side of the bed. She kept wiping her eyes with this tissue that was all wrinkled, same as Dad’s face, and when she sniffed, her lip kept making a strange shape. I reckoned she was trying not to cry properly, like I did when she hit me and I held it all in. My lips turned strange, too, and I knew Mag’s tears weren’t real, that she didn’t mean it and wasn’t really upset that Dad was in this mess.

  “Hey, Dad? When you go home, can I come round to where you live and have some chocolate biscuits?”

  Dad’s lip went all funny again, and a massive tear came out of his eye. I wanted to make him laugh or something; he always used to laugh at me, but I’d made him cry instead. I only wanted to make it all better, but I didn’t know what to do.

  He lifted his hand off the bed, and the ends of his fingers touched mine. I didn’t care if he smelled or looked funny because he was my dad, so I grabbed his hand and squeezed it, but he took in a big breath. I’d pressed the IV needle into his hand, and then my lips went all funny. I’d hurt him.