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sides, and crosses the room to lean over Tess's shoulder where she's sitting at the dressing
table and kiss her hello on the powdered cheek. "Hey, beautiful. Stop losing weight,
you'll disappear."
"Get away. I've not been less than sixteen stone since I was about eight months
old, you're helping me celebrate tonight."
"Alright. I brought you that dress, you need to try it on cos it'll want taking in.
You don't have to do it now, though, just whenever."
"Yeah, I wasn't expecting you til tomorrow, am I going senile?"
"No. Just don't feel like being at home."
"Ah." It's a knowing sort of 'ah', Pip's not fooling anyone. He never intended to,
he realises lamely. Why else would he come here, to the place he always felt safest when
he lived in London before? The story tumbles out in a mess of spat swears, as he's
helping her into the white dress he made and trying not to jab her with pins in his rage.
She doesn't say anything else, just calmly lets him rave on until he can't keep the pace up
any more and trails off pathetically, staring at the 15 on the back of his right hand.
"I ain't good enough for no one," he adds, a bit more calm now the worst of the
poison is gone. "That was like the point with Darren, he just wanted someone to push
about so it don't matter I weren't ever good enough, but Lindsay always had a go cos I
was too girly even though he got a proper rock on any time I dressed up, and now I spose
Olly don't wanna be with me no more cos I ain't girly enough..."
"Well, you know what the answer to that is, don't you?" She turns gently from
side to side, watching the folds of fabric swing in the mirror. "Marilyn, Seven Year Itch?"
"More like Wilma Flintstone."
"Cheeky bitch."
"I'm kidding, you look well fit. I'll bring it back at the weekend when it's done.
What's the answer?"
"Does he know Ophelia?"
Oh.
"Yeah."
"Biblically?"
"No."
"There you go. I mean, that is if you want to. Personally, I'd break all his cheating
fingers off and kick his nads up to his tonsils, but maybe I'm just old and bitter
"You ain't old."
"I'm forty-six next month. I'm practically dead."
"Shut your face, I never known anybody so alive as you." He's leaning against the
dressing table now just to the side of the chair, fiddling with a little pot of cream he
picked up from the mess of cosmetics littering the surface just for something to do. He
still can't feel properly angry. It's not even simmering any more, it's just nothing. He can't
feel sad either, hurt, upset, anything. He just feels tired. "Everyone always knows what
they're doing," he says abruptly, still not looking up from his hands, the little plastic pot
and the old tattoo and the new white dressing on his left wrist. "You know what you're
doing, you got your work and your friends and everything and miserable headfucky little
teenage girly boys think you're amazing and, I don't know, you might've saved my life,
who knows? I might be dead if it weren't for you and Olly but people can't keep looking
after me all the time cos that ain't healthy neither, that's just as bad as people not giving a
fuck at all. And, like... I'm trying to sort my head out and be a proper grown-up and get
my degree and go to work and look after them kids and make sure my dad ain't kicking
my sister round the house like a football but it's just so hard all the time, and I know I
ain't got no right to complain cos that's just life, ain't it? Everyone's the same, least I ain't
got money worries or nothing. I just don't know what I'm doing, everything's too hard. I
can try and try forever but I can't be good enough for no one so what the fuck's the
point?"
Now he's feeling something - for the first time in a long time he misses Lindsay
so sharply it's almost physical pain instead of something deep down and hidden. He
wonders whether that might be better after all - trapped and desperately lonely in a
centuries-old house in the middle of nowhere in a country whose language he can't speak,
no friends, no college, no tattoos, no London noise and pollution, never ever being
forgiven for that one stupid awful mistake, always having that hanging over him like a
massive storm cloud or a neon sign saying "Never forget how much you really hate me".
All that, just to be able to breathe again. There was a kind of weird freedom in giving up
control of his life so completely, not having to think about bills or exams or other
people's welfare. Even the stuff that seems really bizarre now he's no longer in the middle
of it, being ordered to bed when he was tired and bratty even if it wasn't late, being
smacked with a belt or a hard hand when he played up, being sent to stand in the corner
with his hands on his head or the time Lindsay told him he wasn't allowed to get dressed
today and he had to just get on with it all confused and embarrassed for a whole day,
watching telly naked and sitting at the table for three meals naked and even coming out
for a nighttime drive in the mountains naked, all without ever getting an explanation.
Sometimes Lindsay wrenched his arms up and tied him to the bedstead and didn't even
stop when Pip broke down crying, just slapped him round the face and told him to shut up
and kept on fucking him so hard he felt it for days. All of that and Pip never said his
safeword and meant it, not even once. He said it to be a brat, to test if it would still work
when Lindsay was ten seconds away from coming. He never said it and meant it, even
when the ropes or handcuffs bit too tight into his skin or the slapping got too much to
bear. He just put up with it, all the maddening pain and humiliation and snarling words
chipping him away to nothing because that meant he could start again from scratch - he
wondered, back then, if something as simple as a big warm morning cuddle would still
mean as much if he didn't have that contrast. He's not had that in ages, but now it almost
feels the same. After all this, he thinks if he goes home and Olly just gives him a smile
then that's going to be enough to fix things.
Tess is watching him, he can feel her gaze like it's actually touching his skin.
"You can go on stage if you want," she says quietly. "If that'll make you happy." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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