Against the Tide (6 page)

“It’s only me, Mum,” I call out as I close the door behind me.

“Hi, Finn.” Annie, my mum’s carer comes to greet me at the door. Mum has around the clock care as her symptoms vary in severity from day to day. Some days she can pretty much do everything for herself, others she doesn’t get out of bed. We moved her bed and some furniture down to the lounge so she didn’t have to make it up and down the stairs every day, which has made it much easier for her to keep from feeling locked away in her room and shut off from the rest of the world. As Annie comes closer, she frowns. “Is everything okay?”

“Um, not really. I need to speak with my mum. How is she?”

“Well, she had a rough night but she wanted to get up to see the sun rise. She’s in her chair.” She doesn’t pry further, and I’m grateful. I’m not even sure that I have enough words to tell my mum what’s happened, let alone Annie too.

I nod, “Thanks, Annie.”

I swallow hard knowing that saying it out loud will be harder than hearing it. I’m trying to prepare myself but I don’t know how. I enter the lounge and close the door quietly behind me so as not to wake her if she’s resting.

“Finn?” she enquires in a parched whisper.

“Hi,” I reply, coming to the side of her chair and bending to kiss the top of her head. “How are you today?” I shake my head at my own mundane question, before pulling up the footstool to sit in front of her at eye level.

“The birds are barely awake. What’s going on?” she frowns.

“I … I can’t …Lizzie,” I choke on the words before tears I thought I had exhausted roll down my cheeks. I cover my mouth with my hand and shake my head.

“Finn? What’s happened? Is Lizzie okay?” she asks desperately trying to push herself up in her chair. “Finn?”

“She took something, she couldn’t handle it....She … They did everything they could, Mum,” I cry through sobs and tears, trying to get the words out but they stick in my throat like knives. “She died, Mum. Lizzie’s dead. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She looks at me in disbelief, “No, no, no, no, no,” she whispers over and over as her body starts to shake. “Not my baby. Not my girl.” She pleads for my words not to be true. I wrap my arms around her shoulders as she breaks down. Now I’m not only drowning in my own grief, I’m drowning in hers, too.

I push open the door to our house. It was my home, our home. When did it stop being a place of ease? When did it start to feel so cold and empty?

“Damien?” I call up the stairs. The house feels still. Almost like it knows that something in our lives has shifted. I dump my bag on the side unit and start to walk up the stairs. “Damien, are you here?”

I enter our bedroom. It feels like days since I was here last, when in reality it’s been just a few hours. But in the small time that I’ve been gone, the sun has come up and everything looks different than it did in the dark. Clothes are strewn around the room, paperwork pulled out of the desk drawers and discarded on the floor and Damien’s suitcase, gone.

He left me.

That fucker actually did a runner and left me to pick up the pieces. It’s then that I panic. Will this mean I’m going to have the police banging down my door looking for him, or worse, will they think I’m involved somehow? Am I already involved just by being Damien’s girlfriend? Am I guilty by association?

I take in the aftermath of what was last night, and find it hard to get my head around it. So many things. In the en-suite bathroom, on top of the toilet cistern, Damien has left the small mirror that we had downstairs with two lines of white powder chopped and ready to snort with a fifty pound note left rolled up next to it. Is this his parting gift? His way of lessening the blow of him leaving? How little he really knew me. I tip it in the toilet and flush it along with the fifty. I don’t need his money or his coke. It was recreational for us, or at least it was for me, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if this is what contributed to changing Damien’s personality.

I no longer want anything to do with him or his drugs.

I want out.

As I turn to leave the bathroom, I catch sight of myself in the mirror. My hair certainly stayed crazy with a can of hairspray in it, in fact it looks like a couple of birds could fly out at any minute. My makeup has smudged under my eyes adding to the big black rings weighing there already. My shoulder … I turn fully to inspect the mark on my shoulder in the mirror and gasp when I notice the angry red grazes and dried blood that marks my shoulder blades and down the middle of my back where my skin was exposed and ravaged by the stone wall. I press my fingertips to my lips, swollen and slightly tender, there’s a split in my lip where the ring is due to his passionate assault. Another reminder of how crazy last night was.

Who is he? Do I really want to know, or was the mystery part of the allure?

So many questions and no answers. I’ve got to get out of these clothes, I’ve got to get clean. I turn the shower on full, activating every jet and turning the heat up so the steam fills the room. I pull my dress up over my head and toss it in the corner of the bathroom before stripping off my bra and dropping it to join the dress. The little bag of cocaine that Damien tucked there earlier in the evening drops to the floor with my clothes and I gingerly pick it up and hold it between my finger and thumb, inspecting the pure white powder. I never thought it would come to this. But I never would have thought I would have sex with a stranger in an alley, either. So why does the cloak of night change the way I think? How do his burning eyes see right in to my mind and pull out my darkest fantasies?

I get in the shower and tip my head back under the spray. When my hair is soaked I lather it with shampoo, letting the soap and bubbles run over the rest of my body. I can feel it washing away some of the grime of the previous night. Cocaine, sex, betrayal, it’s all washed away from the surface of my skin, but I know it’s left something deeper and more profound ingrained on my soul. I run my fingers over the new ink on my left side along my ribs. I had it done just three days ago. A black and white butterfly, simple and elegant, with the script underneath-

‘
Dreams are free, so free your dreams …
’

Damien would hate it. He hates it every time I put more ink on my body. The first time we ever had a serious argument was when I let my boss, Torran, give me my first tattoo. I had wanted one for such a long time but didn’t know what I wanted, then Torran said he would draw me something to see if I liked it. A week later he showed me the most beautiful design, I got goose bumps the minute I saw it, so I knew it was perfect for me. An ornate sugar skull amongst a twist of ivy and a beautiful hummingbird on each side. It turned out to be the start of what I would like to extend to a sleeve, eventually. The day I came home with it, I had an excitement buzzing through me to show Damien. I wanted him to be pleased for me, for him to maybe be a part of it and have some input on what to add next. But he despised it. He despised the intimacy of having someone leave you with something so beautiful, so loved, so permanent. He lost his temper that night. He threw things, he yelled, and it took us a while to get back to how we were before that. I was so reluctant to get any new ink after that. But then over months, he changed. He was more controlling, and he kept leaving me for weeks on end, so I guess it was my way of sticking my middle finger up to him. Ironically he thinks I’m marring my body, but he doesn’t think twice about shoving chemicals into his system or encouraging me to do the same.

As much as the fresh water makes me feel physically better, I still don’t have any clarity in my mind. Where do I go from here? Do I try and find
the
guy? Do I try and find Damien? I shut off the water and wrap a towel around myself before combing through my hair. I wander back to the bedroom and pick up the cigarette packet that sits on the desk, giving it a shake to see if there’s any in there. It’s half full so I take one out and spark it up, taking a deep draw into my lungs. It sends my head in a spin and I sit on the edge of the bed until it passes. I’m exhausted. No longer driven by adrenaline, I fight to keep my eyes open. I half finish the cigarette then put it in the neck of the empty beer bottle on the bedside cabinet and lie back on the bed. I don’t know where to go from here, sleep seems like the easiest option.

“You look like shit.” My best mate Jamie greets me as she opens the front door to me and takes in my appearance. She, of course, looks picture perfect. We’re not dissimilar to look at, with brown hair and blue eyes, but she’s at least four inches taller than me and god, doesn’t she like to remind me of that.

“Thanks, bestie. I love you, too,” I grumble, pushing past her and heading straight for the kitchen. I plonk myself down on a tall stool at the breakfast bar, and curl my arms on the worktop in front of me, resting my head on them with a huff.

“That bad, huh?” she asks.

“Worse.”

“I’ll put a double espresso in your latte today then. Talk whenever you’re ready,” she offers, moving about her kitchen and fiddling with the coffee maker. I met Jamie about the same time as Damien and I got together. We hit it off right away and I’ve never felt closer to anyone than I do her. I sit for a few minutes, trying to figure out where to start. I wait for her to finish with the milk steamer before I lift my head up and blurt out, “I had sex with a stranger. Damien is gone, somewhere, I don’t know where, and … I got a new tattoo.”

“You WHAT?” she shrieks, dropping the coffee cup on the sideboard.

“I got a new tattoo,” I answer, pulling my lips tight trying not to laugh at her reaction.

“Megs, backtrack … actually, go right back to the beginning. You had sex with a stranger? And Damien was there too? Or just … What? I’m so confused!”

“Okay, I’ll try and give you the condensed version.”

“Oh no, you don’t, missy. I want the full version, every gory detail. I have enough chocolate to see us through at least a good couple of hours.”

Jamie makes her speciality coffees, two hazelnut lattes, mine with a double espresso, which I’m sure is so that I stay awake long enough to tell her every detail of my life as it stands at the moment.

“Here.” She passes me a steaming mug of coffee and the steam pushes out the familiar smell of hazelnut. “And just so you know, I’m drip feeding you chocolate to keep you talking. Go …”

“Um. Well … There’s this guy, I’ve seen him around for the last couple of months. I don’t know what it is with him, but it’s like he sings in a pitch that only I can hear. I know he’s there before I see him, you know?”

“And this is the guy you had sex with?” she mumbles around a huge square of chocolate. I grab my bag and take out my cigarette packet.

“Not in here, you don’t. If you want to smoke, you and your little white cancer sticks will have to stand outside.”

“Jamie, this is an emergency,” I whine, knowing that she hates me smoking. I don’t actually know why I do it. Habit, I suppose. 

“You know how I feel about it, Meg,” she scolds and I grumble under my breath and push the packet aside.

“Okay, okay. Gimme the chocolate instead.” She slides it across the counter top, “Where were we?”