Good Me Bad Me(38)

Dean’s friend moves to sit next to me, his fingernails ragged. Chewed. He positions his arm behind me, running along the back of the bench, touches my shoulder with his hand.

Touches me.

I try to ignore the movement I hear from the hut, bodies shifting into position. Morgan, my friend, on her knees or her back. The boy’s face leans into my neck, the sounds from the hut replaced with the sound of his saliva as he moves a piece of gum around his mouth. I shiver, should stand up, can’t feel my legs. Stuck.

‘Are you cold? I’ll warm you up.’

The smell of alcohol, the cigarette in his hand, the closeness of his face to mine takes me there.

To you.

A shadow, a canopy woven out of twisted love and lust, suffocated me in my bed every night. You.

He stubs out his cigarette on the wood of the bench between us. Flicks it on to the ground, a graveyard of butts. Bent into strange positions, necks broken, bodies folded.

He rests his hand on my thigh, moves it a little, further and further up. The word ‘no’ lodges in my throat, won’t launch. Can’t say it, doesn’t work anyway. No meant yes, meant you always got what you wanted. Took it anyway. When his lips touch my neck they don’t feel like they belong to him, they feel like someone else’s. I never wanted to be touched like that. I never wanted you to touch me like that.

‘Get off, get the fuck off me,’ I say, and jump up.

‘Jesus, what’s your fucking problem?’

I walk over to the hut, hammer on the roof, each step I take punctuated with images of being back in our house, in your room.

‘Morgan. Morgan. Let’s go, I want to go now.’

The boy in the hut calls me a freak. A cock block. A bitch. The sound of a zip going up.

‘Chill out, I’ll be there in a minute,’ Morgan replies.

I hurry up the slope away from them, towards the parked cars, a black cat underneath. Eyes closed, peaceful. Lucky if it walks in front of me. It doesn’t. I’m angry, angry with Morgan. Nobody made her, she went into the hut smiling, still is as she walks towards me now. A can of beer in one hand, takes a mouthful, gargles, then spits it out. Dirty.

‘Why were you freaking out?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Fucking hell, as if you’ve never done anything like that.’

I don’t reply, I don’t know how to explain.

‘Can I come home with you? You could sneak me in on the balcony.’

Yes, is what I should say. She needs looking after, out of harm’s way. She needs to behave better. I could help her do that.

‘So, can I?’

‘Yes.’

You coach me as we walk back to the house, ideas on how to teach Morgan, how to ‘help’ her be clean, but what you’re saying frightens me, it doesn’t feel good to hear. I don’t want to do that to her, she’s all I’ve got, she’s my only friend. I need her. And that’s why I do it, when she kneels down by a row of parked cars to tie her shoelace, I look. Usually I wouldn’t, usually I don’t want to be reminded, but this time I stare in the car window. Your face, the spit of mine, stares back. ACCEPT WHO YOU ARE, ANNIE. ‘I don’t want to,’ I reply.

‘Who are you talking to?’ Morgan asks as she stands up.

I shake my head, she smiles and calls me nuts, says, don’t worry about what happened in the park, they’re dickheads anyway. And I realize, you can say what you want to the lawyers about me, you already have, I’m sure, but Morgan is mine. I get to decide. I tell her I’ve changed my mind, too risky to sneak her in with Saskia around. She’s annoyed, says she’ll have to go home now and be hassled by her little brother and sister. Thanks a lot, Mil, she says, before she walks off.

I want to tell her, she’s welcome. But she wouldn’t understand.





17


The questions are straightforward when Mike asks me them. He’s a psychologist, programmed to support and hold me up, not like defence lawyers though.

He reads them out. What exactly did you see through the peephole on the night Daniel Carrington died? How long did you stand at the peephole for? Are you sure that’s what you saw your mother doing? You’re absolutely sure? What happened after that?

Please tell the court again. And again.

When we finish he tells me I did really well. He places the page of questions down and says he’s sorry I’m having to go through this. That it must feel very exposing, the idea of answering questions in front of a jury and a judge. Yes, it is, I tell him, it’s scary not knowing what might happen on the day. What might be said. But I’ll be okay, I think that going to court, facing you, is my way of helping the children you hurt. My way of taking responsibility. He talks about survivor’s guilt and how it can make a person feel more culpable than they are. Sometimes I think you feel like that, that the deaths of the children were your fault. Am I right, he asks? I’m not sure, I reply, sometimes, yes. You did nothing wrong, he says, and if your mother says anything to the contrary, it’s her attempt to continue abusing you.

A neat explanation, a ribbon in a bow.

We talk about the time you drove us to Manchester during the school holidays. You were careful, so careful, to spread what you did over great distances. The underground network of desperate women who were sufficiently reassured by you to hand over a child. Groomed from afar for years. The camouflage again was me, a daughter of your own. We could have gone on and on like that but then you took Daniel, someone I knew. Too close to home.