Dead Lovely (7 page)

Kyle watched as Krissie pulled Matt towards the tent. When Matt bent down to go in, she put her foot on his bum and kicked him inside, then jumped on top of him before she’d even zipped the tent flap three-quarters shut.

Kyle looked at Sarah and raised his eyebrows. Krissie’s sexual aggressiveness was nothing new. She’d always been ‘proactive’, as she called it, and she put up a good feminist argument as to why this was okay. But having known and liked Krissie for so long he’d always wondered about the pathology of her particular combination of promiscuity and lack of emotional commitment to the men she slept with. It wasn’t as if she came from a dysfunctional family. Quite the opposite, in fact – since both her parents were delightful and very loving.

Even more striking were her close friendships with men like him and Chas with whom she didn’t have a sexual relationship. She’d always been
oblivious
to how much Chas loved her, determinedly keeping her relationship with him playful but
platonic.
It seemed to Kyle that Krissie never entered into sexual relationships with men she actually liked.

After raising her eyebrows back at him, Sarah unleashed some long overdue bitching. ‘I can’t believe her,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kyle.

‘Last week she shags a neighbour, leaving her baby alone in the house. Tonight she pretends Robbie doesn’t exist so she can screw the brains out of some other dope.’

‘She’s depressed,’ said Kyle, as Krissie’s naughty giggles ricocheted from the tent.

‘How can you defend her?’ asked Sarah, before going to their tent in a huff.

Kyle did feel protective of Krissie. She was finding it hard to be a mum – what single mother wouldn’t find it hard? She was all alone, and had not completely anticipated the responsibilities of motherhood. Plus, she was a free spirit, a creative spirit with dreams and passion and excitement. Of course it was hard.

He was getting pretty hard himself, Kyle noticed as he tried to stand up to go to the tent. He looked at his semi-erect penis and quickly sat back down.
He’d been thinking about Krissie, and this was what had happened to him. Was he developing feelings for her? And why was he looking at the unzipped part of Krissie’s tent, where he could see a tiny piece of flesh, and feeling so discomfited? And why didn’t he stop looking? Why, instead of stopping, did he crawl along the ground, closer to the gap, commando-style, his semi now becoming fully detached, and park himself one foot from the zip so that he could see more bits of flesh moving in the darkness?

Kyle was not a premature ejaculator. He had always been quite proud of his ‘yardage’, which was a mathematical equation he and Chas had developed that went like this:

Y = t × l

or:

Yardage = total number of thrusts × length of erect penis.

Anyway, Kyle’s was good. Good length, good number of thrusts per session = good yardage. (Chas calculated that his was even better, but Kyle guessed this was probably to do with anti-depressants which stopped him from coming, although he had no proof of this.)

But by Loch Lomond that night something
happened
to Kyle that hadn’t happened since he was thirteen when he and Annette McMillan exchanged a look. He ejaculated, after the slightest rub against the raw earth beneath him.

Kyle let out a surprisingly loud gasp as this
happened,
and promptly heard Krissie stop what she was doing to say, ‘What was that?’

Kyle ran into his tent, jumped into his sleeping bag and snuggled up against the sleeping Sarah a split second before Krissie could be heard outside asking, ‘Did you hear something?’

‘No,’ said Kyle drowsily, as Sarah stirred beside him.

‘I thought someone was outside my tent.’

‘Not us.’

‘Okay then. Sorry about that. Nighty night! Thanks for a fantastic day!’

‘What’s she on about?’ Sarah asked sleepily.

‘No idea.’

A pause.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah.

‘Me too.’

‘I love you.’

‘Me too.’

Sarah kissed Kyle, but he rolled away.

I was determined, after the painful experience with Marco, to enjoy Matt, but it happened again. As we connected, the pain was excruciating and images of blood and crying and retained placentas rushed in at me. About then, I heard a gasp, as if someone was outside the tent. I halted proceedings, put my top on and went outside, but there was no-one there. I asked Kyle and Sarah, but they didn’t know anything about it. It seemed I must really be crazy. Not only was I a depressed alcoholic who had flashbacks, but I was also paranoid.

I returned to Matt and told him I was drunk and spinning, and that I didn’t want to have sex with him anymore. I also told him that I didn’t have a budgie. I had a baby boy, Robbie.

‘Och, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Come here you, let it all out … Let it all out.’

So I did. I cried into his chest.

And then he let it all out. Undid his zip, took my hand and slapped his sticky flesh into it.

‘Jesus!’ I pulled my hand away and tried to get up, but he pulled me back down and lay on top of me, kissing my neck and forehead with a furry, dry tongue.

‘No!’ I said a little more loudly, but he kept going.

‘Matt! Stop!’ I shrieked.

I tried to push his chest, but he didn’t seem to feel it. All he seemed to feel was between my legs, and I didn’t want him there. I wanted him gone.

Before panic really set in, Matt fell on top of me, and as I shoved him off me Kyle came into view, bending over us.

Kyle dragged Matt all the way to the loch and pushed his face into the water. I followed, surprised by Kyle’s anger and strength, and watched as he held Matt’s head down. I was too dazed to do anything at first, but after a few seconds I realised I needed to intervene or Matt was going to drown.

‘Stop!’ I said, but he didn’t.

‘STOP!’ I grabbed Kyle’s shoulders and shook him and he finally made eye contact with me.

‘Let him go,’ I said.

As soon as Kyle dropped him in the water, Matt scrambled to his feet and ran off into the distance. He must have packed up there and then, because his tent was gone in the morning and we didn’t see him on the track at all the next day.

Afterwards I sat beside Kyle on the loch. We didn’t say anything at all, just sat there and stared, and then Kyle stood up quietly and went back to his tent. I don’t know how, but Sarah slept through the whole thing.

After Kyle left, I stayed by the loch and thought hard. I’d asked for it, hadn’t I? I’d been rat-arsed and I’d literally dragged the man into my tent. What was he supposed to think?

I watched the huge body of water in the loch move with the wind. It looked scary and
unfathomable.
I was feeling the same way about my life: it was dark and cold, and I was lost in it.

The next day Sarah woke up fresh-faced and well rested, while Kyle and I staggered out of our tents tired, hungover and grumpy. We all had baked beans and coffee for breakfast and packed our tents. Kyle and Sarah didn’t make a good tent-packing team. When it came to the folding, Sarah kept going left instead of right, and then right instead of left and, well, she was just plain useless. After several attempts at folding the tent small enough to fit into its teeny tiny tent packet, an exhausted-looking Kyle asked Sarah (huffily) to make some rolls for lunch, which I was already doing, and she (huffily) came and sat beside me.

It was a little overcast as we began the walk along Loch Lomond. It was going to be another long day’s walk – over twenty miles – so we had to keep up the pace. We started reasonably well – me first, Kyle next and Sarah behind. But after two hours or so, Sarah stopped to rearrange her pack, and by twelve o’clock she had not only finished all our water, but had taken to stopping every twenty minutes.

We sat on a beach and had a lunch of rolls and ham and, my God, I would have killed for a drink of water, but like I said, Sarah had finished it all, so I dipped my head into the midge-filled loch and sipped a worryingly still mouthful.

I suppose what I felt at lunch that day was anxiety. My heart had started pumping a little fast, and my whole body felt like it had just woken up after a night of heavy drinking with only three hours’ sleep – which wasn’t exactly surprising, since it had. My head felt fuzzy, eyes sore, adrenalin pumping, blood sugar levels all over the place. As I looked at Sarah eating the roll I’d made her, I wanted to scream at her: ‘I hate the way your jaw clicks when you eat!’ As I was thinking this I caught Kyle’s eye and could have sworn that he was thinking exactly the same thing.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Sarah, still chewing (click).

‘Nothing, hon. I’m just tired!’ I said, wishing to God she wouldn’t talk with her mouth full.

Three is never a good number. Whenever someone
tried to play with me and Sarah, it never worked out. Marie Johnston played with us at school for a while, but she went to Sarah’s house once, and it didn’t go well. Their parents had a big falling-out, apparently. Marie didn’t come to school the next day, and by the time she returned a week later, she said she didn’t want to play with us anymore.

After lunch, as we practically crawled along the loch-side path, I started to feel bored and annoyed with Sarah’s whingeing, and a distinct desire to play with number three. So after five miles, I stopped stopping every time Sarah did. And after ten miles, Kyle stopped stopping every time Sarah did. And after fifteen miles, we stopped taking a break every now and again so Sarah could catch up, and stopped asking her if her feet were any better. Instead, we walked together, fast, almost running, inspired by each other’s energy, practically laughing with
exhilaration,
pushing through branches and up rocky ridges, one foot and then the next.

Endorphins must have been flooding my veins because I felt like I was flying when I reached Inverarnan. Kyle and I did a high five in front of the old pub. Sitting down with a cold beer, we started feeling more and more guilty about our treatment of Sarah. She wasn’t as fit as us, after all.

Chastened, we went and booked two rooms in the quirky old pub as a treat for Sarah because today was her eighth wedding anniversary and Kyle had totally forgotten until now.

The day along Loch Lomond was excruciating for Sarah. Her feet had blistered on both balls and heels. For the first ten miles, she stopped and put new plasters on each of the four pressure points, but then she ran out of plasters and her feet became too slippery with blood to hold them, so she merely stopped to assess the damage. Krissie and Kyle were too far ahead now and she was ashamed to ask some German walkers to get them. Why her feet? Why, out of all six possible feet, did her two have to be the ones that couldn’t cope with this endless path full of endless branches?

As she scrambled over branches and up rocky paths she made herself count to ten, breathe deeply, keep walking.

The techniques she’d learned at therapy were quite useful, as it turned out. She could tune out, and
cope. But when you have to tune out continuously because your feet have been ripped to shreds and your husband and best friend have abandoned you – on your wedding anniversary – you start counting to ten through your teeth, and you start breathing fast and deep through your nose. And eventually, you start sobbing and then chanting a chant that goes like this: ‘That fucking bastard! Those fucking bastards. Bastards!’

They always left her out when they were together. They shared a past, having lived together during their college years. Even now they seemed to have an intuitive understanding of each other and know things Sarah didn’t which they loved
reminiscing
about. Kyle smoked dope with Chas. They’d bagged two Munros (i.e. walked up two big hills for no good reason) together. They’d had a friend at uni called Bridget. They loved spicy sausage pasta.

It also surprised and angered her when they seemed to have read the same newspaper articles on the latest war or on the opposition leadership race or on that new arthouse director and talked
interminably
about said issues.

Sarah had been thinking such things as she took her rucksack off in front of the pub.

‘Surprise!’ Krissie and Kyle yelled from an upstairs window.

Having thought bad thoughts about them for several hours, it was hard to be pleased when they
showed her to her quaint room, poured her a glass of champagne and ushered her towards a huge bath filled with salts and bubbles. It took several minutes in the tub with the lights low to stop hating them more than life itself, and to start loving them again. Her husband of eight years and her friend since forever.

When Sarah came down to dinner she was
prepared
for a fantastic meal and ready to enjoy herself.

But after the starter of prawn cocktail and one glass of Australian cabernet sauvignon, her feelings of hatred re-emerged. Would they ever stop talking about university? What was so interesting about that Chas guy with the greasy hair and large pupils?

Before she knew it, she’d eaten her pudding and was saying, ‘That was lovely, thanks, but I’m exhausted. I think I’ll hit the sack.’

Kyle did the right thing – she had to give him that – he offered to come with her three times or more. But she refused … ‘No, no, you guys stay, I’ll see you in the morning.’

She lay in her bed fuming for the next four hours. How could Kyle have let her go to bed by herself on their anniversary? Having sex on your anniversary is a duty, and under no circumstances should it be overlooked.

Eventually, she got dressed in a fury and went downstairs. To her surprise, there was no-one in the living room, and no-one in the bar. All was deadly quiet.

She looked out the window into the garden – nothing but darkness.

Then, from nowhere, Matt’s face appeared behind the glass. Sarah jumped back and watched as Matt turned and walked towards his tent.

Her heart eventually slowed down again, and she returned to the task at hand. Where were they? Where could they have gone?

But she knew really. It was obvious where they were.

Sarah didn’t breathe at all as she walked up the stairs. It seemed like hours had gone by when she finally reached the first floor. She gulped as she drifted along the corridor towards Krissie’s room.

She paused, turned the handle slowly.

Opened the door slowly.

Walked towards the bed slowly.

Turned on the light fast.

But there was no-one there. Funny how it felt almost disappointing. Over the last four hours Sarah had fantasised about catching them at it, had planned the self-righteous walk out the door,
envisaged
the sale of the houses and the permanent move to France and the nice thirty-year-old neighbour called Jean-Luc who would give her armfuls of home-grown aubergines and then several babies.

Now none of this was going to happen and it was disappointing.

Sarah’s therapist had explained this kind of
thinking to her because she did it a lot. If Kyle was late from work she would worry herself into a frenzy and imagine him dead on the side of the road or murdered in an underground car park. Ms Therapist had said that this thinking was not due to worry, but anger. When Kyle was late, it made her feel better to imagine that his throat was cut or that he had been sodomised to the point of rupture by an escaped convict. It was anger and it was not healthy – remember the techniques?

So Sarah went back down to the living room and counted to ten and breathed deeply for what seemed like forever.

Just as Sarah’s heart rate came back down to earth, Krissie and Kyle giggled their way into the foyer, covered in mud. Seeing her, their carefree expressions turned to naughty-schoolchildren expressions.

‘Sarah!’ said Kyle.

‘Matt’s out there! Do you think he’s a serial killer?’ asked Krissie. ‘He has on the same clothes – those same khaki shorts – and his hands are huge!’

‘Look what we found!’ said Kyle.

They showed her a bag of dirty mushrooms.

‘Let’s do it!’ said Kyle.

‘What?’ asked Sarah, as she took the bag from Krissie to have a look.

‘Magic mushrooms! They’re everywhere!’

What followed was an argument, which can be summarised thus:

Sarah: ‘So how old are you exactly?’

Kyle: Rolls eyes.

Krissie: Gives Kyle a knowing smile.

Sarah: Notes exchange, throws bag of mushrooms at Kyle, shouts, ‘Get fucked the both of you,’ and hobbles upstairs.

While fuming in bed, Sarah went over the usual cringe-worthy analysis of her cutting retort. ‘Get fucked’ couldn’t begin to convey the extent and complexity of her grievances. She actually couldn’t believe that’s all she had said, and that no-one had followed her upstairs to beg her forgiveness. It was as if she didn’t exist. If things didn’t get better
tomorrow,
she decided, she would leave. Leave this stupid holiday, leave Kyle, leave Scotland. Perhaps, she thought, as she sometimes did, she would even leave the world.

She was so tired from crying that she fell asleep and didn’t hear Kyle come in. Instead, she woke to a strangely wonderful sensation and after a moment of semi-conscious bliss she realised that Kyle was licking her where he had never licked her before. She was horrified at what was happening, and
walloped
him over the head.

‘Yuck! What are you doing? What is wrong with you? Have you taken those mushrooms?’

‘No!’ Kyle surfaced, rubbing his skull. ‘I just thought, something different.’

‘You thought ‘something different’! Jesus Christ,
Kyle, you ignore me all night on our anniversary, and then – yuck! Clean your teeth!’

Kyle did as he was told and then fell asleep.

Over breakfast the next morning, Krissie and Kyle giggled like lunatics as the pedantic hotelier rearranged all the knick-knacks on shelves and mantles and hearths and sills.

Why were they laughing? wondered Sarah. Were they laughing at her? What little secrets were they sharing? What was so damn funny about the
knickknacks
on the window sills?

As much as she wanted to scream, Sarah ate calmly. She was giving it one more day. She would be reasonable and logical, and she would try to salvage the holiday.