The Things We Do to Our Friends(2)
Everything changes.
Braid and Winky have gone now, and it’s just Blondie. He sits straight and tugs at the handcuffs around his wrists, tentatively pushing his ankles apart to test the restraints there. They’re far too tight to budge. Blondie unfolds a white cotton napkin and lays it out in front of him.
Winky and Braid emerge from the house, and Braid has an enormous platter. It’s antique silver, far too big for her, like she’s in a school play. She lifts the top off the platter and reveals a dish, holding it under his nose with glee. A deep bowl of mushroom risotto, the rice hot and steaming. The aroma of stock and fresh porcini.
Winky picks up the serving spoon. She shoves it into his mouth while Braid secures him for the feed—her fingers dig into his gums. They ignore the fact that the food is escaping and spilling down his front. He barely has a moment to think; all he can taste is mealy rice.
Blondie is laughing quite madly.
No, he wants to shout out, not me, but there will be no words to phrase an impassioned plea to the girls.
The mushrooms become warmed slugs and they stick in his throat, but there’s no time to chew, so he gulps, hoping to push the chunks down. The next course is a ratatouille served by Winky, and again she feeds him, spooning the food into his mouth, forcing it down. She does so alone and the other two watch. Then corn, fried in butter and laced with herbs, ripped from the cob and forced down his gullet. He pulls at his wrists, but there’s no point.
He can only measure time by the food that arrives. Vegetable stews, creamy cauliflower gratin, a yolk-yellow soufflé, then pasta coated in cheap American cheese that you use to top burgers on a barbecue and should never, ever be used in a pasta dish.
They maneuver the implements with ease, ramming the courses down. The metal of the spoon is painful against his palate, like a dental instrument, and then, later, further and deeper into his throat.
He is choking.
The food congeals, turns to gray glue as night falls. His body convulses and the music plays on.
1
EDINBURGH
I’ve decided to look back and make some kind of sense of it all, and the initial idea of starting to put the pieces together in one place was because Tabitha’s mother asked me to write it all down so she had something of Tabitha’s—a tangible record of her life for the extended family—but I couldn’t quite bring myself to cobble together a fictional account where we were normal students who did normal things, so I ended up giving her a vague excuse, and she didn’t ask again. But the idea wouldn’t die down once she’d brought it up, and I thought, why not? Why shouldn’t I go back over what happened for my own purposes?
Then the question was, where does the tale begin, and although there are other places that may seem more logical, September 2005 feels right.
My arrival.
How very dramatic that sounds! But it felt dramatic at the time.
September is a month that has a special anticipation associated with it. As the leaves turn and the nights darken. The first time you open a book, cracking the spine and smoothing down the pages so they can’t spring back up.
It’s a month that means fresh beginnings, and that only happens a few times in life, when the slate is wiped clean and the story is ready for you to begin and tell it how you wish. The first day of a job when you’re cautious and rule-abiding, or with a new partner when you share appealing parts of yourself to test the reaction. At university, it is even more of an opportunity. Nobody knows who you are; there are no expectations or preconceptions. How you answer each question and how you position yourself is entirely up to you. But it needs to begin somewhere, and for me it was Edinburgh, at Waverley Station.
I was ready to move, so desperate to leave Hull for good, but it was hard not to feel a little discouraged when I stepped off the train and strode out into the city. I was expecting post-summer blustery days with the warmth still in the air, but the weather was particularly bad that year. I thought of my granny and what she’d say in that scornful tone: “It’s just a few hours away, Clare. I don’t know why you expected it to be so different.”
How gray the Old Town was. It was magnificent, but there was an underlying sense of squalor below it all. Steps led to alleys, weaving with possibility, where you could just as easily find a grand square as you could a dead end and a seagull gnawing on scraps of cold chips. I remember the magnitude of scale when I walked along to Queen Street and stared down to the New Town. The views went all the way to the Firth of Forth, a glimpse of water, but the winds were quick and soon a dampish fog obscured it all, like a bundle of laundry pulled dripping from the washing machine, then pinned up. I ignored the weather. I was determined to stay optimistic about the whole thing.
Enough wandering. I had a map printed, tucked in my bag, showing where I was staying. My new home was under a mile away, so I decided to walk. It was a battle through the streets alone with two suitcases, which contained everything I owned, and on the way I encountered a group of confused tourists. They blocked the entire road and craned their heads to take pictures of St. Giles’ Cathedral with bulky cameras hanging from their necks. Then there were the other students who bumbled alongside harried commuters. What a mix of people to get lost in!
I was a bubble of nervous energy, and I could have screamed out loud, right there in the middle of the street, but I held it in.