Closer (10 page)

Abuse. That's what we've got. Like some illness. It feels sick, that's for sure. I hope we get well soon, like Chloe says. 

“He's admitted it, so we can take it as read that it happened. Unusual that. But I've come across it before.” 

She means this happens to other people? 

“I think he's only just realising what he's done himself,” Mum says. You can hear how angry she is. 

“But he's an adult. He has to know what he's doing,” I say. 

“Adults aren't always as straight-forward as we'd like them to be.” Sabina smiles at me. I'm not sure about that. She's not going to treat me like a kid because of what's happened. I don't catch her eye. 

“It would be good to see you on your own for a while.” Sabina looks at her diary. “Melody, can we talk to you first? Then you, Hannah? And then George.” 

“My name's Mel,” I say. She should have asked me my name, not looked at her diary. 

“I'm sorry.” She looks like she might almost mean it. 

I hate this. I hate them coming into my house and taking over, telling us what to do. I hate what's happening and I want to turn the clock back and I want to be with Raj. 

Hannah goes back up to her room. We're all quiet as we hear her go upstairs and nobody looks at each other until the door closes and Sabina looks at Mum. 

“We'll talk to Mel on her own, Mrs. Philips. If that's okay Mel?” 

“Yeah.” 

Mum gets up slowly and leaves the kitchen. She doesn't look like she wants to go. 

“I'll be in the living room with George,” she says. 

The door closes. I'm playing with a knife on the table. My head's well down. 

“Mel, I know this is difficult.” 

Do you? Do you know that, Miss Social Worker, Miss come into our house and wreck everything? Do you know that, Mr. Briefcase and folders with everyone's lives inside on white pieces of paper? 

This is crap. My life is crap. 

“I'm here to help,” Sabina says. 

How did I know that would come next? I'm here to help. I'm here to help you tear your life to pieces. I'm here to watch you squirm and tell me things you wouldn't tell your best friend. I'm here to tell you what you can do, and I'm here to make you do it. 

“I know.” Did I say that? Who was that mumbling, looking at the table? I can see all the marks that knives have made on this table ever since I was little; before then, when I was sitting in a high chair throwing my food on the floor. In fact, this table is probably the only thing in the house which isn't new. I've grown up with this table. That's a comforting thought somehow. I watch the marks and think of the scratches on Hannah's arms and I know I have to talk, that this isn't about me, or not just about me, it's about Hannah. 

I look up at Sabina for the first time. She must be about thirty, and she's wearing a blue top, the same colour as Raj's teeshirt, and that makes me like her a bit for some stupid reason and as I look at her she's looking straight at me, not smiling but like she understands. 

“What do you want to know?” 

Mr. Duncan gets a new sheet of paper out and sits with his pen ready. 

I shuffle in the chair. “I don't know where to start.” 

Sabina leans back. “Tell me a bit about yourself. I know you're really good at art, Sally Griffin told me.” 

“You know Sally Griffin?” 

“She and I go back a long way.” 

I think of Sally and the art room, the smell of paint. 

I'm ready now.

It's later. The doorbell rings. I go to open the door, and Chloe's there. She's holding a wilting bunch of flowers. I take them. 

She grins. 

“From the garden – when no-one was looking. But I've had them in my bag all morning.” 

She hands over the flowers. I'm still standing at the door. 

“You're not in bed then. I thought you'd be dying when you weren't at school – you never miss double art.” 

“No.” I don't know what to say. 

“I'm sorry.” She drops her visiting-the-sick act. 

“No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have sounded off at you.” 

“Look Mel, I don't understand or anything, but we're best mates. I don't want to fall out with you.” 

She's looking like she wants to come in the house. 

The social people are still here, talking to Hannah and Mum. I don't want Chloe to see. 

I edge outside, go and sit on the chairs on the decking, make sure Chloe's not facing the kitchen window. 

I put the flowers down on the table. They look crushed, gasping. 

“Can't you tell me?” 

I shake my head. I don't trust my voice. 

She puts her arms round me.

When Chloe's gone I head for the back room. There's an easel set up in there, Dad found it in a skip and mended the broken hinges. I pin a big sheet of paper on the easel and grab the black paint bottle and the biggest brush and a palette. 

I said no to having a medical. Having a medical: weird term for poking things up your fanny to see if you're a virgin. No chance. Nothing to see anyway. I am and that's an end to it. Wish I wasn't. Wish all this wasn't happening. Wish they'd all fuck off and leave me alone, all of them. It's been enough without them all coming round like a bunch of crows picking at a dead fox in the road. I'm not roadkill. They're not getting a piece of me. 

I squeeze out the paint so it oozes over the palette. I push the brush into it and put layers and layers of black on the paper, lines again like the doors, crossing each other, building up into some crazy kind of grid on the paper, thick paint, layers of it until there are only a few specks of white left and the paper's buckling under the strain. My left arm aches from holding the brush and I've got a headache from concentrating so hard. 

Mum comes in as I'm stepping back to look. She stands beside me and puts her arm round me. I move away, I don't want anyone near me. 

“They've gone,” she tells me. “Sabina's coming back to see us tomorrow.” 

“She needn't bother,” I say. “I don't want to see anybody.” After an awkward silence she goes out and shuts the door. 

I pick up the paintbrush again and slowly paint out all the last bits of white, like filling in the last jigsaw pieces. Now I'm tired, like I've been up all night, and I remember I was up most of the night. It feels weeks since last night, weeks since I kissed Raj in the park yesterday afternoon. 

I rip the paper from the easel, screw it up and lob it into the bin. My hands and arms are covered in wet black paint and I don't care.

Saturday. The day Dad used to have time with each of us. Only a week since. Feels like years. This is too much. I want to think about something else, anything else, anything to stop thinking. I lie in bed for a while watching the marks on the ceiling and they start to make the shape of Dad's face so I get up. 

In the shower I'm thinking about him again. What's he doing? How's he living with himself? And I'm back when it all started, back looking at Hannah's journal in her bedroom. “I'LL KILL HIM ONE DAY FOR WHAT HE'S DONE TO ME”. 

I stand in the bath with the shower pouring over me, knowing how to stop it all. It's so obvious. 

When I get downstairs Mum's in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her hands round a mug of tea, like she's cold, like it's winter when the sun's already scorching down. She looks up when I go in. 

“You're early. It's only nine.” She doesn't want me here. 

“Couldn't sleep.” I grab a box of orange juice from the fridge and a glass. I pour the juice, half a glass, and sit down. 

“By the way,” she says. When Mum says by the way she means there's something important she wants to say and she's been holding off from saying it. I'm not stupid. And I'm not going to help her out here. I sip the orange juice and keep my head down. 

“Your dad's coming over for a visit this afternoon. Just for an hour. Two thirty.” 

I look up. “He'll miss the match.” 

“Yes,” she says, and a smile crosses her face for a second. “I'll be there all the time. I know it's going to be difficult.” 

Difficult. Too right. 

“What are we supposed to do? Talk about the weather?” 

She sighs. “I don't know, Mel. This has never happened to me before.” 

“That'll be a first then. You usually know the answer to everything.” 

She goes quiet for a minute. 

I keep going. “And anyway, this hasn't happened to you. It's happened to me, and to Hannah. Did anyone ask Hannah or me if we wanted Dad to come over? Did they?” 

“George needs to see him. He's been asking all week.” 

“Goodie for George. You can't make me see him.” 

“Mel, this isn't like you.” 

“No, don't suppose it is.” 

“You don't have to see him. He's going to be here, that's all.” 

She gets up and puts her mug in the dishwasher, then goes out. 

I look at the juice for a while then throw the rest away and leave the glass on the table. 

The knife's in the drawer by the sink. Dad called it Slasher. It's got a long blade, thin and narrow, with a sharp point at the end. Dad liked it for carving. He'd stand at the table with the chicken or whatever and wave Slasher about a bit, making death and destruction noises, then when he knew everyone was looking at him he'd hold it with both hands and stab it into the chicken, like it was a wild boar or something. Like he was some hunter who'd tracked it down in the forest. 

I'm thinking about him like he's dead. 

I take out the knife. The handle's cool and smooth, black. There's a red bag on the floor Mum uses for shopping and I put the knife in the bag. The handle doesn't show out of the top. I take the bag upstairs. I make sure nobody's around to see.

At half past two Dad rings the front doorbell, and I can hear Mum let him in from my bedroom. I'm not going down there. And he's never coming in here again. 

George goes running out to see him and I imagine Dad hugging George like he did, only now it's disgusting. 

The KEEP OUT sign is on my door, and I've got the music on. Stuff I know Dad doesn't like. Loud, with the windows open. The bag's on the floor. I've got the alarm on my mobile for 3.25. 

Somehow the time goes and I'm watching the seconds click through on my mobile when the alarm goes. I leave the music on and creep downstairs with the bag over my shoulder. From what I can make out, Dad and Mum and George are in the living room, and the football's on. They're not talking or anything. 

Then I hear Mum's voice. It's icy. 

“Just a few more minutes now.” 

George begins to whine and I'm in the back room in a second. 

Dad leaves by the front door. George is wailing and Mum's trying to cuddle him but he's fighting her off, shouting at her, no words, just shouts. 

I let myself out by the back so Mum can't see and as I go out of the side door I see Dad walking towards Welford Road. I follow him. His back's slumped and he's walking slowly like he's carrying something really heavy. 

I keep back. I don't know where he's staying, and I want to find out. I know it's not far. He crosses Welford Road near the petrol station and I follow. He heads down to Clarendon Park Road, and lets himself into a house near the Co-op. 

I stand there, watching the Sikhs across the road going into the temple, all the flags out and loads of families and children all looking happy and together like they're going to a party, carrying bags of food and stuff. 

And then I see Chloe, walking down the road. She's carrying a shopping bag. I duck behind a hedge, but she's seen me. She waves and runs towards me. I walk towards her – don't want Dad to come out and see. 

“Hey, you feeling better?” 

“Yeah.” I try to sound fine. 

“It's so strange – haven't seen you.” 

“It's just stuff you know. Going on.” I'm so aware of the knife in my bag. 

“I'm here, you know?” 

“You found out yet?” 

“No. It's driving me crazy. I'm going to ask them, straight out. Tonight.” 

“Right.” 

“You going somewhere? Want to come down Queens Road? Mum gave me some money – we could have a drink in the deli?” 

“No, I've got – stuff to do.” The knife again. 

She looks crumpled, sad. 

“Look, have I done anything? I mean, I know I can be nosey, and ask too many questions and all that. Mum's always telling me.” 

“No, it's not you. It's me. I just need a bit of space, that's all.” 

She turns to go. 

I feel so guilty. “Let me know – when you find out.” 

“Okay.” She doesn't look round. 

I watch her go down the road and turn into Queens Road. 

Then I go back and ring Dad's doorbell. It rings louder than I expect, longer, and I jump back behind the hedge to make sure it's him who answers the door. 

He opens it slowly, and I move forward so he can see me. 

“Mel.” He says it like he's trying to remember who I am. 

My hand's on the knife handle in the bag. I haven't thought this through. I don't know how to do it. I'm close to him now, he's standing there, he doesn't want to let me in. I don't want to go in. 

I pull the knife out of the bag, and I hold it high over my head. He's looking at me with his mouth open, his eyes big, like he can't move and I can't look at his face. I concentrate on his chest and he's wearing a thin white teeshirt and I can see the hole and the blood pouring down the T-shirt as if it's already done.