Boys and Girls (28 page)

Alan now rose up from his bed, delighted to be feeling so very nearly joyous.

‘You know, Doctor Atherby – it's funny, really. It's funny. If only you had been like that before. Said things like that before. In all these dumb and wasted sessions. If only to prove to me that you had even been listening.'

‘It's hardly professional. But now you see me as just the layman. Tell me, Alan, before you go … well – you don't have to, of course. Your business now, after all. But I do remain curious about just a couple of things. Care to indulge me …?'

‘We're over time now, Doctor Atherby. By my watch.'

‘Think of it as a bonus. An extra. Gift, if you like.'

‘Well I certainly don't recall you ever saying
that
before. This is a first. And how very strange that it's also the last. Mm. Well now look – a couple of things, you say. Why not. And I think I can guarantee that I'm damned sure what one of them is going to be, anyway. In your game, prurience, never too far distant. Is it? If not at the forefront, it's always just hanging around. Am I right? Oh I am. I see. How sadly predictable. I did so wish – for your sake really, Doctor Atherby – that you
were going to, um – disabuse me of that one. But no. So – you want a little nosy peek, yes? Into the conjugal side of things – that it? The voyeur at the crack of an open door? Or detached and professional interest, allied with the desire for, oh God –
closure
? Hardly matters. Because the honest answer is, Doctor Atherby, that I just don't know. Whether or not I have
wondered
is something else entirely, but I do not know because, well – one, I have not been told, and two, I most certainly have never enquired. I
will
know, of course, when the time is right. Have my suspicions confirmed. It will emerge quite lightly, a raggedy end from the random jumble of one of our talks. He will speak, and I shall listen. But by that time – oh Doctor Atherby, alack and alas – you and I will be strangers to one another. Is that not the case? As if, as if, we were ever even for a moment anything else. So there's your answer: don't know. As to the other little thing that's worrying away at you … well, this will come over as fresher, at least, for I honestly haven't an idea. Quite what this one could be …'

‘Uh-huh. Well it's something you – touched on. Once or twice. Amanda. Yes? How she was coping, what she was thinking. Susan, I am assuming from your virtual exclusion from any single one of your recent experiences, is pleased to have now what she wanted. But Amanda …?'

The hostility, bellicose wrath, that I have constantly harboured for the blighted Doctor Atherby – kept it warm, and close to my heart – has really always been of the subtlest sort, hardly more really than a malignant palpitation. But it welled up now into something so very gaudily lit, that close to brassy – very near to beyond control, and tinged by the fire of violence. My glare was clearly sufficient to make him step back from me – and then I went for the exit whose glamour
and fury so very many times I have cruelly denied myself: I strutted, I stamped – I swept with contempt his papers to the floor. And a door was slammed.

There's this coffee place, OK, quite near to where we used to live before we all went like a million miles away to Richmond (believe it?) with the new guy. The like – old guy? Whatever. Not Franco's I don't mean, the coffee place (can't go in there any more) – this one is kind of old-fashioned like your auntie's sitting room, yeh? I don't actually have any aunties, but you like know what I mean. Not designer. I was wearing black tights and my boots and a black sort of like shift-type dress I got at Primark, tunic thing, and this cool like black varnish on my nails? Dad says it looks like I've been digging graves and Mum says it's like in a Hammer film which I didn't know what it was and I googled it and it's all vampires, yeh? And I'm pretty cool with that. And black long beads that I wrap round and round and round and they still hang down. When I'm not in my shit school uniform, everything I've got now is black because pink and stuff for me is just so like over. Except my mouth which I do red. But like –
really
red? Postbox, yeh? And guys, they really look at me differently now. Like him over there, with his paper and his coffee, keeps looking over, and I'm kind of smiling back. Ramming my spoon into the dried-up hunk of brown sugar, chipping away at it, and kind of just like smiling if I see him looking over. It's not my God-you're-
gorgeous
-come-and-get-me smile (which I can
so
do) – it's just, you know – friendly really. See what happens. I followed him in here which is crazy really because I didn't have that much cash and even a cup of tea here, which is the cheapest thing I could find, is like nearly two quid, you know?
Such
a rip-off. Maybe Dad should've opened a coffee place instead of trying to sell all like nails and stuff. Except that now he doesn't have to do anything, and Mum neither. He says he's writing a book, and Mum says oh
crap
, he's not writing a book. She's really into design and stuff now – talking to all the builders and the garden people and I think she must be driving them like so just totally nuts because she keeps on changing her mind. It's going to be great, actually, when it's done, the Richmond house. It's just so huge. My room is cool – I got to choose everything and they said no to black walls but the furniture's black and really shiny, Perspex and retro, and it's all wired up for just like everything and I've got my own bathroom which I also wanted to be black but they said no you can have white, right – but I got black tiles, so it's cool. Kitchen's about a hundred feet long – and the big like glass bit at the back? Still all rubble and wires sticking out, but it's going to be, oh wow – just so
amazing
. It's all so much better than where we used to be. Always hated that little house. Hated it. Don't know why. He's still doing it, looking, this guy … It's creepy in a way – but you remember all of that ancient stuff, yeh – about Girl Power? You kind of know what they were on about. It's, like – a really great feeling?

It's like I've grown up a lot. When I said that to Tara, she just went oh yeh yeh Amanda – what, because you did it, just because you did it with Harry the Poet and now you're all like – just so
cool
, just so grown-up, just so
different
 – so much better than
you
guys. Which was just like so totally
duh
 …! But she's been funny lately, Tara – since her mother just so totally lost it, right, and nearly killed her dad with a teapot. And it had, like –
tea
in it? So Tara, you kind of make allowances for – her mum's a psycho and her dad's a conjuror with a fractured skull. But
she was wrong like big-time about it being all to do with
Harry
, because it wasn't that at all (wish I hadn't even told her, now). But all that, it was just so nothing. I feel so completely yuck if I think of it, so I don't. And anyway, he wasn't was he? A poet. I've been reading poetry lately – all these thousands of books from the old guy's old place – and some of it, wow, just blows you away. Like Marvell and Donne – and Clare I like (thought at first it was a girl which was a leetle bit embarrassing …). Shelley is like to die for. Keats is pretty. Eliot I just don't get – Auden's OK, some of it. Hardy's my favourite, though – by like a million miles. Anyway – the little arsehole Harry, yeh? Yeh well – he's a poet like I'm a, I don't know – brain surgeon or a TV presenter or something. He's just so like
not. Plums
 …? Give me a break. So yeh – it's a shame in one way that he had to be such a total like loser, the first one, but it doesn't really matter. Matters to my mum, though – oh God you should've heard her. On and on she was going. It was the day after I did all those really wild and crazy things – God it makes me so go red when I think about it. I'd taken some of Dad's whisky, whole bottle – oh God I can't tell you how disgusting, just the smell of it now, it makes me want to puke – and some fags that were lying around, which I didn't … what is it? Swallow. Inhale. Whatever. Tried it, but I like nearly died. So they were just pretty filthy. And I thought what else can I do? Because all this – it's just so
tame
, you know? And I went to this tattoo and piercing place just near the station because I just knew that of all things in the world I could do that would make my mum go just so totally mega-crazy … but God, the prices. And also, I hate like needles …? Always have since mumps jabs and stuff. So I pretty stupidly stuck on a fake tattoo that I got on a magazine way back last summer some time and it's been in my
bag ever since and I drank some more of the horrible whisky and then I just stuck a bloody drawing pin in my ear! Right through. I just so don't
believe
I did that. And then I stuck it in the other ear! Oh Jesus – blood, everywhere, and I was dabbing on all these little bits of, like –
Andrex
? And then I think what I thought was – I know, I'll take the car, go on a motorway and like kill myself and then they'll have to listen to what I say. Yeh I know – like crazy talk, and I guess it was all the whisky: why Dad just never knows what he's ever doing, I suppose. Must be that. Well I'd never done it before, driving or anything, but the keys were in the blue bowl in the hall and I sort of remembered how Mum and Dad got the thing going and I did that and oh God! It like started to roll away? And I got kind of panicky and just turned the wheel … and yeh, that's when it ended up in the hall. Jesus. And I was just so out of it, I remember thinking oh yeh I know – I'll just go through this smashed-up front door and creep up to bed and no one will know.
So
not how it went. I just remember Mum really shaking me and I could see she was shouting and looking psycho and gone all totally weird on me but I didn't know what she was on about or anything. Next thing I was on my bed and the ceiling was all like crazy and going round and in and out and I thought I was going to be sick and then I thought I was just going to die and I really quite wanted to, actually – I remember not minding about it. And I sort of like kind of woke up a bit then, and I thought I can really like wind her up, Mum, get her going, because she thinks I don't know what I'm talking about and so I hit her with the virgin thing and it was great when she cried and stuff, like she was really in pain. I'd wanted to tell her anyway, right from when it happened to me, but I don't know if I ever would of.

Next morning I felt pretty OK, actually – hungry more than anything. Got a shock when I saw the front door and the hall and everything because all that bit seemed to be more like a dream than anything real that I'd been a part of. And I had eggs and ham and Mum said How could you? And then she started on at me: did I remember what I'd said last night? Did I mean it? Was it true? Yeh. And what did I think I was
doing
? I could have been killed. Did I realise I could have been killed? Yeh. And why had I been drinking and hurting myself? Self-harming is what she said. Did I know I could have scarred myself and contracted septy-something and died? Yeh. You seem, Amanda, very unconcerned by all of this. Shrug from me. It's no big: I wasn't killed, was I? Didn't die, no scars, no septy-something: I am sorry about the car and the door, though – I'd pay for it, the damage, only I don't have any money. She was drinking coffee, Mum, but she looked like she more wanted to puke it up than swallow – all gone like white, she was: looked really old. And the – ‘other thing', she said: I didn't think you were so stupid. Were you attacked? Were you assaulted? Did you know what you were doing? Yeh. What do you
mean
? What does ‘yeh' mean? Why don't you ever talk
properly
? Why don't you make the effort to communicate like a human
being
, Amanda? What I mean is, I said, I knew what was going on, if that's what you're saying: I'm not, like – a
baby
. And then she started kind of snivelling, which was creepy, and she wouldn't like look at me. You did at least, I'm assuming, have the brain to –
use
something. Did you, Amanda? Did you? You did –
use
something, didn't you? Didn't you?
Answer
me! Yeh. I said yeh. What the fuck? And then it was like Who Is He? The boy, the man – who is he (the bastard)? Just someone, I said: doesn't matter. Gone. No big.
And then she was up and shouting: no
big
?! No
big
?! No big
what
, you stupid little girl? No big
deal
? No big
event
? Is that what you're attempting to say? Well I have news for you, my girl: it
is
a big deal. It
is
a big event – because apart from the fact that you are now – oh God, I thought you had more sense … well, apart from
that
, I might inform you Amanda, that this –
person
, whoever he is, is in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of God as well – a
rapist
. Oh God. I thought you had more sense. And I will find out who he is, Amanda – whether you tell me or not, you may be assured that I will not rest until I have found this –
criminal
, this dirty little—! Oh God. I really did think you had more
sense
 … And I will see that he gets what's coming to him. Hear me? Hear me? Do you hear what I'm
saying
to you, Amanda …?! Yeh.

So I just left her to it – Mum and her brand-new game: Hunt The Rapist. Whatever. She won't find him. She can't. No one knows about him, his name, where he is. And anyway, I don't want to get him into trouble. I mean yeah – I'd like to kick him in the face, the fucking arsehole, yeh sure. But I don't want all police and stuff. They'd only start on at me like you see on TV – what did I think I was doing there –
missy
 – all alone with him, late at night? Which is a bloody good question, actually: one I've been asking. Anyway. Whatever.