Etched on Me Read online

  The fingers of her left hand caress-coax mine to loosen. The fingers of her right hand fold into her palm. Clench. Fly. Clench. Fly.

  I prop up on my elbows. Stare down at the sight of her buried in me, up to her wrist. For a moment, I feel a bizarre, clinical detachment, like I’m looking at my bad arm transformed into a gaping-mouthed red change purse, but then I’m overtaken with awe: that she can go so deep, that I can let her and not die.

  A grin spreads across my face. Clare reaches up, rests her left hand against my cheek. Her right fist’s rhythm lunging, almost a punch, her jutting knuckles nudged far as they can go. With every list forward, there’s a twinge high up in my belly, a stinging shard of pleasure.

  Clare clenches her fist one last time. Slides her hand and her fingers almost all the way out, the expanse and release so huge it’s almost enough to set me off and finish me up, but then—incorrigible thing, paying no mind to my tetchy little groan, her eyes warning just you wait—she dives back in, turning me inside out with just the barest tilt of her fingers, and then I’m gone, Margate tide rolling in, salty gush on a ragged shoreline, Howth Head flower of the mountain, yes I’m romanticizing but I can’t help it, my eyes full of tears then and now, Clare stroke-stroke-stroking my cheekbone with her thumb, whispering “There’s my girl, there’s my girl,” as I come so hard I fear I might splinter, sounds tumbling from my mouth that drone and wail, an ambulance siren of screamsobs, so loud and unbridled I miss the alarm on my watch, miss the knock on the door, miss the “Bed check, ladies” call, miss every last reminder of where we are and how bold and sloppy with desire we’ve become, until I open my eyes and see no-excuses-entertained Amal, framed by the spiky jumps of the candle in ominous silhouette, standing at the end of my mattress.

  10

  After that came a string of moments I’d rather not remember, hard and jagged as chain-link fence in a prison yard:

  The 12:01 march down the hall, strong-armed by Amal and Miranda into separate rooms.

  The treatment meeting the next morning, during which Kath informed me that I had “broken the therapeutic alliance” and would have to be discharged.

  The shame of being sat down outside her office, head in my hands, listening in to fragments of conversation on the other side of the door.

  “Your staff promised us . . . safe from negative influences.”

  “But, Mummy, I told you, it wasn’t—”

  “Clare, please. There’s no excuse for . . . godless whore.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Manning, you need to understand . . . chronic history of sexual abuse . . . learned patterns of . . .”

  Right. Just the latest pathological model, fresh off the factory line. Living proof the exploited will exploit.

  I wanted to vomit. I wanted to bash their self-righteous heads in. I wanted to grab Clare by the hand and whisper Let’s take that elopement risk, sprint past the phoenix mural, down the lifts, and out the front doors.

  Instead I watched as, flanked by her mum and dad, Clare came out into the corridor wearing The Dress, her reddened eyes wide and damp, her tear-stained face numb. When she turned her chin to meet my gaze, just for a second, I stared back, stricken and helpless, my own face melty as Miss’s, my lower lip trembling.

  “So immodest,” Clare’s mum tsked, shaking her head as she tugged at Clare’s grommety claret-colored sleeve. Hurrying her along, while her dad carried the suitcases.

  And that was it. No surreptitious farewell kiss, no secret slipping of phone numbers into pockets. Inert with disbelief, still smarting with soreness from what she’d done the night before, I watched her meek retreat and thought: Bitch. Coward.

  Years later, my heart aches not for my own day-past-seventeen devastation, but for month-from-sixteen Clare’s. I imagine her now at twenty-one, with a soft butch girlfriend and a smashing job mentoring LGBT teens or managing the office of some chillaxed progressive Christian church, greeting new visitors in a Bettie Page hairdo and a vintage dress. I try not to picture her lying on a morgue slab, cold and yellowy-eyed.

  But despite my reflexive habit of obituary scanning, you’ve got to figure: if I’ve been all over the telly and in the national newspapers and she’s not come forward to contact me, she’s probably dead. Maybe I’m flattering myself, or maybe she’s brilliantly sorted out and just wants to put the crazy days behind her, but either way, I don’t hold out much hope. It’s in short supply right now, and I have to triage it like a casualty nurse, ration it like wartime silk.

  • • •

  While I waited in the hall with more than just my pride unbearably tender, Kath was on the phone to Francesca, giving her the Lesley-as-seductress rundown. After a few minutes, she ushered me in to talk with Francesca myself.

  “Please,” I whispered, soon as I got on the line, “you have to understand, we were properly in love, Francesca, I swear it wasn’t—”

  “Lesley,” she said, “I want you to know two things: One, that I believe you. And two, that Clare’s family plans to . . .” Her voice broke. “To report this to police.”

  What? “I—I don’t . . . Why?”

  “Under age of consent law, you’re automatically considered an assault perpetrator.”

  Oh, shit. Jesus fucking fucking Christ.

  “Just because she was—even though it was—”

  “Consensual? I’m afraid so.”

  My shoulders shook. My hands trembled. I put my palm to my mouth. Let out a whimper.

  “Listen to me,” Francesca said, her voice both hypnotic and firm. “This is not the end of the road for you.”

  Tears and snot and sobs of disbelief. Everything running, slipping through my fingers. The cored apple of my insides dissolving into frantic mush.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Francesca went on. “Take a taxi to the train station, and get the first express back to London that you can.”

  “But I—I haven’t any money.” My words were a choked gulp.

  “Kath will give you some.”

  Anything to get rid of me, right? “And then, when—”

  “I’ll meet you at St. Pancras.”

  “With a bunch of police?”

  “No. Just me.”

  I wiped my nose with the side of my hand. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  • • •

  I shuffled through the ticket hall at Nottingham station in a sluggish haze, guitar case in one hand, bin bag full of clothes in the other. My shoulders hunched with the weight of my rucksack; my mind flitted to the apex of the room’s high ceiling, then crawled back down the face of its giant clock like a groggy spider.

  Each time I bumped into someone with a startled, mumbly “Pardon,” they stepped back so sharply I was sure they thought me a precociously afflicted version of One of “Those” People. I would have been affronted, were it not for the knowledge that they were absolutely correct. I was One of “Those,” and then some: psych ward reject, alleged sex abuser, southbound for—what? Another bare-bulbed hostel? Court-mandated lockdown in a young offender institution?

  In my head, I could hear Francesca and Miss giving me pep talks filled with complete-and-utter-bollocks buzzwords like potential and hope and resilience. As I passed a phone box, I thought about ringing them, but then I pictured myself getting all choked up and changing my mind, and knew I couldn’t take the chance. Wasn’t like they’d answer, anyway; Miss was probably rushing round to get all her adoption paperwork ready, and Francesca was no doubt preparing similar documentation in order to prove I’d not coerced anyone into fucking me or being fucked.

  I wended my way past benches to the ladies’ room, which was almost empty, thanks to the midafternoon lull. No commuters cramming the stalls. Good.

  I edged past a young mum with a posh nappy bag—pretty Asian brocade, chocolate and teal—balanced on one shoulder, and a dark-haired moppet in pink corduroy dungarees perched on her hip. She gave me a quick, polite smile as she hurried past, but the baby girl full-on gri
nned, flashing two top teeth, pert and pearly, so embracing of my grungy strangeness that, for a second, she convinced me I wasn’t too far gone.

  But then they were gone, with a cheerful “Let’s go find your daddy, shall we?” and a thunk of the door, leaving me alone yet again before my self-hatred and a smudgy mirror.

  Sharp hair spikes. Swollen eyes. Set jaw. I imagined my mug shot, all defiant chin and vacant stare, posed just above the white-on-black letters spelling out the surname of the one who had supposedly made me this way. A legacy you could legally clear, but never erase.

  Soon as I pictured that, I knew the baby’s smile had been a mirage, knew I had to do it. I hefted my guitar and bin bag into the largest stall I could find, farthest from the toilets’ entrance, and locked the door. Placed the guitar lovingly on its side. Punched the bag into a makeshift pillow, and arranged it atop the guitar’s case, in that little culvert between its neck and body. Nestled my rucksack close by and sat down cross-legged to rummage through it.

  Ulysses, no. Soul cards, not under the circumstances, haha. Phoenix binder with Clare’s notes, oh, no, no.

  One by one, I pulled out the trifecta:

  My CD player and headphones.

  A bottle of water from the vending machine across the hall.

  An economy-sized bottle of aspirin tablets, bought from the Boots up the road while my cabdriver waited, meter running.

  I put in my headphones. Soundless, for now. Plugging my senses up. The yielding pop of the water bottle’s cap strangely satisfying.

  Tablet bottle wasn’t messing about, though. Sticky as hell, like it was testing me, like it was channeling him back in the days of the hall closet: You really want this? Hmm? I know you do. Show me you do. Faking to avoid the choke hold.

  Not bloody faking now. I wrenched that fucker open, scraping free its papery seal. Stared down into the bottle at the round white arsenal. It sounds demented now, but seeing all those pills gave me a sudden burst of strength, a quick surge of power. I wasn’t sticking around to be lied about, or to be made an object lesson, or to crawl raw-kneed down that road Francesca claimed wasn’t necessarily ending in a jail cell. Oh, no, I was spiriting away on a white (tablet) horse and sticking it to them. I was going to make them sorry.

  Soon as I shook a handful of pills into my palm, though, I started to panic. What if I vomited them all up and they didn’t take and I wound up in an ambulance like Clare had once, with one of those medics lubing up a big plastic tube to snake down my nose into my throat?

  The thought of Clare made me shake out even more tablets. There’s my girl, I told myself, like an encouraging lover. A waterfall of tablets cascaded into my lap. Couple bounced off my knee, landed on the dirty floor. I plucked one of them between my thumb and forefinger and placed it cautiously on my tongue, letting it disintegrate a little, all grungy chemical tang.

  I longed to spit, but stood firm. Chased it down with a chug of water. Pinched a second pill from the floor and popped it firmly into my mouth, following it immediately with a throaty swallow.

  Two down, one hundred eighteen to go.

  First tablet past the bottle-instructed maximum dose was the hardest. I stared that little bugger down for nigh on five minutes, statue-still, while an old lady clomped in on orthopedic soles. Once she’d made her exit, I sat up straighter, and channeled him again, and ordered myself: Swallow, bitch.

  Little by little, like Clare’s knuckles, I worked my way up to three, then four, then five. Got easier, then. Scoop, toss, gulp. Scoop, toss, gulp. Automatic pilot. Head buzzing like the wonky fluorescents above me. My hand molded into a pill-catching cup. Outside, a rumbly announcement of the imminent departure of the train I’d been supposed to catch.

  On the next round, I tasted salt. Reached my free hand up to my face to feel the wetness. First thought I had was: The ceiling’s leaking. Then: My ceiling’s leaking. And then, detached as a severed limb: Oh. Crying.

  I looked down into the half-empty bottle. Pressed the handcup—no, say it right, my hand—to my mouth to stop myself from sobbing in earnest, but my body fought back. Lips curved. Eyes screwed shut. Shoulders arms fingers face quaking.

  Stop. Stop it. I’ll buy you a Cadbury Flake if you’ll just fucking shut up. Or even, if you’re really good, some Russian revolution chocolate. Hazelnuts and a little cherub, ripped in half, I know, but still, but . . . Shh, Lesley-lovely. Here.

  Swig. Swallow. Swig. Swallow. By the time I’d worked my way to the bottom, the announcer had called three more trains.

  One last glug. I pushed myself to my feet to unlock the door and walked out to the sinks like it was nothing. Tossed the bottle in the bin and covered it with handfuls of paper towel.

  I took off my jacket. Sat on the stall floor and dug in my rucksack for the train timetable I’d plucked off the rack so I could at least impersonate a person with a plan who knew where she was going. Uncapped the plum fine-point Sharpie I’d borrowed off Chloe a few days earlier, and turned to the lightest-hued fold of the timetable.

  Tell Gloria Kremsky I love her, I scrawled. Tell Francesca Fleming-Jones thank you.

  Then I tucked the instructions at my elbow, lay back on my plasticky pillow, and draped my jacket over myself. No blood, this time. Just me and my headphones, still lifesavers. I hit PLAY.

  “Little light, shining . . .” Kate Bush and her piano, out there on the waves. I knew it was a song about a disoriented woman drowning, but all I could think of was that baby’s spit-drenched grin as I let the nausea lap over me like an incoming tide, then push me back out again, buoy-less, lifeboat-less, my eyelids flickering until they closed.

  11

  Groggy head-shake, chin-jerk, wrist-throb. Off in the distance, a beepthumphiss. Like an old radiator, only more machine-y.

  My crusty eyes scraped open. Tape on my hands. Tape over my mouth. What the—?

  Just swallow. Try to swallow. Can’t swallow. Oh my God, there’s something down my throat, get it out, fucking get it—

  “Stop. Stop.” Steady, forceful male voice, Eastern European accent. His firm hands prying mine away from the plastic piping that protruded from my swollen lips.

  I scratched at him, scratched at the drip lines, scratched at the bedclothes, scratched at the (fuck oh fuck oh fuck) catheter shoved up me and snaking out of my knickers, everything I could reach, it all had to tear.

  “Lesley. Don’t.”

  At the sound of my name, I startled. Glanced to the right. Realized it was Miss’s Russian husband leaning over me. Mr. Broodyface. I could see why she’d fancied him. All that dark smolder, now focused in forehead-furrowed concern, on me.

  “Please, try to—”

  What? Relax, love? I ripped my hands out of his. Slammed my fists against the bed’s guardrails.

  “Look,” he said. “I know the last thing you want right now is some strange man trying to keep you from finishing what you started.”

  With my least-taped hand, I flipped him off.

  Not so much as a frown. “And you’re no doubt thinking, Fucking wanker, don’t give me that empathetic crap, ’cause you haven’t got a clue what this is like.”

  I shook my head.

  “No?”

  I shook my head again. Gestured towards my gagged-and-bound mouth.

  “Here,” he said quickly, grabbing a pen and paper from a nearby nightstand and placing the pad gently atop my blanketed right knee.

  My fingers fumbled with the pen, the top of my hand smarting from the tilt and pull of the surgical tape, my scratchy handwriting befitting the sociopath I still believed myself to be.

  Reading mind. U = me? After yr accident?

  He swallowed. “Yes,” he said. “When I woke up, I tried to punch the nurses. Scrawled notes to my doctors that they should have let me die.”

  TRUE, I wrote.

  “What?” he said. “That you should have died?”

  I nodded. U going 2 try 2 convince me that’s rubbish?

  A quiet, worl
d-weary sigh. “No.”

  Thx.

  “I do, however,” he said, punching the call button above my bed, “need to let the staff know you’ve woken up.”

  How long? I wrote.

  “You were in a coma for two days.”

  Two whole days, spent pissing myself and being breathed for by a machine. God. How disgusting.

  Miss send u here?

  He shook his head. “I sent her downstairs to eat. She’s not moved from your room the whole time.”

  Took off school?

  “Soon as she heard.”

  I closed my eyes. Told myself to feel touched, but all I felt was the weight of obligation: to thank her for her wasted effort; to rise from my bed like one of those bloody phoenixes who, at that point, felt more like albatrosses.

  Bless him, Mr. Miss (I knew he had a name she’d mentioned before, but I was blanking on it then) kept her waiting in the café while the nurses came round and checked my vital signs (status: infuriatingly vital) and my throat plug and my drip tubes and my heart-monitoring stickypads and (fuck oh fuck oh fuck) the placement of my catheter—that last procedure so terrifying I buried my face in Mr. Miss’s shirt the whole time. Never thought I’d willingly seek comfort from a man my dad’s age, but there I was, comforted by the warmth of his chest and the cradle of his hand against my head.

  After that, I was so exhausted and shaky I sank back on the pillow. Beepy heart thingamajig slowed to a measured pace, the ceiling said, Oh hello dearie, you’ve been gone too long, come sit up here with me, let it go for a while, and then—

  Hurried door swing. Urgent squeak of shoes across tile. “Oh my God, why didn’t you come down and tell me she’d—”

  I opened my eyes to see Miss—her eyes rimmed with such bad circles she looked like she’d been beaten up, her hair a loose, messy tangle—hovering over me on the bed’s left side, stroking my closest hand, murmuring to me in a voice that sounded both despairing and elated.

  “Oh, love. Sweet girl. You scared the hell out of us.”

  Sloppy, flustered, her fingers hit the drip line’s bandage, sent a sharp twinge through my bad arm. I yanked away.