The Things We Do to Our Friends(17)

This is not that story.

I felt anger swell in my chest and I sped up, but he met my pace. He came closer, swerved without subtlety into me, and he touched my arm. It was too much.

I pulled away.

It did not deter him.

“I. Know. You,” he said, smiling gormlessly. He really was quite drunk. Not a threat but certainly blocking my way.

“You need to back off,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Hey, don’t freak out!” He held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture, but it was short-lived. He was testing me, because he moved in closer again and I could smell him. Dried sweat and sweet aftershave.

“This could be something nice,” he said, which could have meant a lot of different things.

Such a lack of hesitancy. An absolute certainty that everything would go his way. Now I could ignore it and smile, let the rage grow and then recede, like a wave that rises then falls, before the waters turn still. Back then, that kind of control wasn’t possible.

I wasn’t able to let him leave.

If someone had shouted out one of my names in the street and pulled me back, it wouldn’t have worked. I was set on my course and when the boy came toward me again, jerkily this time, like he might fall over, I pushed him and he stumbled, lost his footing, and fell to the ground. It was all happening in sharp focus and the world was brighter than I wanted, but I was alive, buzzing. It was a feeling I recognized well.

I kicked him hard. A rush of satisfaction as the spike of my heel grazed his arm where his sleeve was rolled up, and then in a split second I pinned the arm to the ground. A drawing pin skewering paper. He tried to wrench it away, so I pushed down. His flesh was pliable, almost plasticky and inflatable, like the sumo wrestler I’d seen earlier.

He howled, and the sound rang through the quiet streets. I pulled back at the loudness of it. I hadn’t broken his skin; it would bruise, though. The anger and that hot fizz of energy had retreated.

Soft waves lapping.

The boy wheezed. He didn’t seem that aggravated, but he looked like he’d sobered up a bit. He was speaking, I think, but he was incoherent to me, his words more of an indistinguishable bleat against the ringing in my ears. It was cold, but my body didn’t register the sensation anymore, just calmness. The adrenaline faded away, along with that loss of bodily function, as if I was in a dream or a video game.

Was I scared of the repercussions? I don’t think so—I had hurt him in a way that would heal. It was rare for me to be confident about things back then, but in that instance I was quite sure he wouldn’t go to the police, because that would make him question what had happened, make him wonder how he’d touched me.

I took both shoes off, so my bare feet slapped against the cobbles as I walked the short distance home. A feeling of weightlessness, like I was gliding above the streets, and I crept back into the flat.

A few hours later I woke up to a gentle knock on my door as Ashley offered me a cup of tea. I thought she hadn’t noticed my discarded shoes and dirt from my feet on the floor until she shuddered.

“I hate Halloween,” she said, putting my tea down next to my bed. “What did you dress as?”

I groaned, pulled the covers over my head, and she tutted, shutting my door behind her.





13


The Shiver began to peel off from each other and seek me out individually as the term went on.

Despite the way that night had ended, things were fine between me and Samuel. I found him brash and over-the-top at times, but the car thing hadn’t scared me. If anything, the whole episode was intriguing. I thought perhaps he had been testing me to see how I’d react, and after it happened we somehow seemed easier around each other.

I also suspected he might be interested in something more than friendship, and I didn’t entirely shut the notion down, because I liked the attention. Better to leave it in a blurred place of possibility. So our nights continued, and he picked me up regularly without notice.

Finn was irritable about it, huffing and puffing when he saw him. But the visits were nice, and they were innocent enough.

Full admission into Tabitha’s circle meant I was invited round to the flat more. For breakfast, she played hostess, serving up badly cooked eggs Benedict around her messy kitchen table. She never cooked them for long enough, so the whites always had the consistency of phlegm.

Oh, just dig in, Clare, don’t be precious! she would say.

We never discussed normal things; we were trapped in a world of storytelling, in a universe where we were the center of it all. Loud, dramatic tales from Tabitha, where she told me she was descended from royalty, name-dropping so heavily that I nearly laughed out loud, or she asked me to skim over an essay she’d written like she was doing me a favor by allowing me to read it. Then there were business ideas from her too, involving importing French wine from near her mother’s house, and she mentioned something about selling organs that I was almost sure was a joke. All these things were still surface level. I think I only started to really understand them because of Servants’ Christmas.

Tabitha announced it, and I had no idea what it was, but Imogen and Samuel exchanged a knowing glance, a rare show of Samuel acknowledging Imogen—he tended to ignore her however hard she tried to get his attention. The look between them made me think this wasn’t a new thing and also that it wasn’t optional. The premise was that we wouldn’t give out presents and waste money on gifts for each other, but we would each perform services. And it couldn’t just be an IOU (how slovenly, Tabitha said), everyone’s gift needed to be a tailored treat for the recipient. The other odd thing about Servants’ Christmas was that gifts could be given in private—if anything, this was encouraged. Initially, I was dreading it; I wasn’t used to such things—when I was a child we celebrated the occasion simply, with a meal on Christmas Eve.