Human Conditioning (49 page)

She muttered a thank-you then
left the chairman and rushed into the living room. He did not enter the flat to
see if she needed any further assistance, but Lily hadn’t expected him to, the dirty,
cowardly bastard.

“Gina!”

Gina was lying against the
wall between the couch and the television. Lily wondered briefly how she had
got there, but her focus was immediately captured by Gina’s shallow breathing
and her emaciated body, inundated with scabs and needle track marks that she
hadn’t seen beneath Gina’s dressing gown the last time she had been there. Now,
Gina was dressed in just lacy black knickers and a matching bra, and the
afflictions on her body were glaringly obvious.

Lily knelt down before her.
Taking her chin in her fingers, she lifted her head up, but their eyes did not
meet. Gina was utterly disorientated, her eyes gazing ahead but not focused on
anything in particular, and her pupils constricted.

She spoke, but her words were
slurred and hindered by her shortness of breath. “I need Aiden...”

 “Aiden’s not here, G... it’s
me, Lily
,”
Lily warbled, her voice strained.   

“Aiden?”

Tears sprung to Lily’s eyes.
“No, G, it’s your friend, Lily. Lily Summers...”

“I thought you went to college?”
Gina muttered deliriously, her tone one of confusion, as if the past five years
had not happened at all.

 She licked her lips. They
were dry. Her whole mouth was dry. Lily could tell by the way she smacked her
lips together before she spoke, and they were chapped and sore at the creases
of her mouth. Her nose was running, and a wet stream of mucus was forming above
and dripping over her top lip.

She twitched restlessly.
Lily’s eyes clouded with tears. She took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m
going to call an ambulance, G. I will be back in just a few seconds, OK?” 

Gina groaned. Lily was unsure
whether it was in protest or agreement, but even so, she got to her feet and
located the phone in the hallway. Within a few minutes she had spoken to the
emergency services and was heading back into the living room. “I’ve called...”

“Dad, I didn’t do it...” Gina
mumbled, and Lily saw her flinch as she entered the room. She sensed that Gina
had already forgotten she was there. She cautiously knelt before her once
again, attempting not to startle her and, this time, Gina lifted a hand to
shield her face and cowered against the wall. “Don’t hit me,” she begged. The
imploring urgency in her tone stunned Lily into silence momentarily.

She gulped. “I’m not going to hurt you, Gina. It’s your
friend, Lily Summers...”

“Lily?”

Lily managed to move to her
side and sit beside her. She lifted Gina’s twig-thin arm and placed it in her
lap, clutching hold of her hand. She was freezing. Lily’s other arm snaked
around Gina’s skeletal shoulders and she lightly pulled her into a side
embrace, her perfect nails running tracks through Gina’s dark, unwashed hair.

Gina relaxed against her and
began to mumble incoherent words and half sentences, falling in and out of
consciousness. Lily couldn’t quite piece together what she was trying to say,
though she was quite sure she wasn’t actually trying to say anything.

She looked about the room,
continuing to comfort her friend until the ambulance arrived. The room was
filthy. There were take-away containers everywhere, and clothes draped over the
couch and the stair’s banister. The coffee table opposite them was littered
with cigarette butts, loose tobacco, glasses, teaspoons, silver foil... just
like the first time she had gone there. She spied the little silver box that,
she knew, held the substance that Aiden supplied to her friend as a wage for
her services, and her stomach lurched with an overwhelming sickness. Suddenly,
the full force of her grief and fear rose up within her in the form of anger –
anger over scum like the so-called pillar of community she had just met
outside, and fury over the man who was responsible for all of her friend’s
suffering: her husband, her beautiful, loving husband and the father of her
beautiful daughter. She had an overwhelming desire to expel the surge of
emotion within her and tear apart everything that Aiden had created, everything
he had caused.

She tore her eyes away from
the table and looked down at Gina’s face. It was ashen, and her cheekbones were
too prominent beneath her skin. Her eyelids flickered, uncertain whether to
open or close. She could feel her short intake of breath and hear the wheeze as
she exhaled. Minutes passed where the only sound was that of Gina’s shallow
breathing. Lily wondered every few seconds where the hell the ambulance was.

Gina’s body was falling
heavier against her. Lily squeezed her to her again, her arm wrapped tightly
around her shoulders. She could feel Gina’s ribs pressing hard against her own.
She could feel that she was now fighting harder to gain a breath and tried her
hardest not to panic.

“Aiden!” Gina cried suddenly,
a gut-wrenching howl as if her life depended on his presence.

Lily’s face crunched up into a
silent cry. “Aiden’s not here,” she sobbed as she continued to stroke her
friend’s hair with trembling fingers. “I’m here, G. Me, Lily, your friend.
You’re not alone.” 

Gina shifted and gazed up at
her. Her eyes were wide suddenly, alert and strangely responsive. “I’m sorry,”
she whispered.

Lily frowned, momentarily
thrown. Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and shook her head
frantically to dismiss her apology. No apology was necessary, not anymore.

Gina gazed up at her. Then she
lifted a skeletal arm and her fingers took a strand of Lily’s hair and she
began to stroke it as if it were a cherished pet of hers. A smile crept to the
corners of her chapped lips. “You were always the prettiest one, inside and
out, Lily.”

Lily gulped down the strain of
her anguish and on a brave smile and replied, “No, G, I was in awe of you. You
could have been great...”

“I let you down.”

“No, no, you didn’t. I let
you
down... and I’m
so
sorry.” She could no longer hold her tears and her
chest shuddered beneath Gina’s head.

Gina closed her eyes and a
tear fell down her cheek. She coughed, but it was short-lived and she peered
back up at her friend and Lily took her hand and squeezed it gently. “Lils,”
Gina whispered. “I didn’t mean for all this. I didn’t have a choice...”

Lily nodded. “I know.”

“No... I don’t think you
really do. I wanted...” she gulped then went on, “I wanted so much to be like
you. You’re so loved. To be safe must feel...”

“You’re safe now...” Lily
sobbed.

“Lils, can I tell you
something I’ve never told anyone before... before I...?” Lily sniffed and
nodded frantically, purposefully attempting to distract Gina from finishing
that sentence.

Gina wheezed as she inhaled a
breath to continue. “Roy didn’t deserve my loyalty...” She nodded lightly, as
if the thought had just occurred to her, then added, “I realise now that he
ruined my life. All that I’ve done, it was all because of him.”

Lily stared at her intently, a
sudden sense of trepidation creeping slowly up her spine. There had always been
something about Roy Watson that Lily hadn’t liked. His coldness was something
that had always remained in her memory. “What did he do to you?” she whispered.

 “He used to...” Gina closed
her eyes and slapped her lips together. Her eyebrows furrowed as if it took all
the strength she had left to string her important message together. “He was a
child molester, Lily. He used to rape me...” Lily gasped but Gina went on, “I
know now that he was wrong to do that. Mum knew how he used to...” she gulped,
“... crawl into my bed at night,” she shuddered at the memory. “That’s why she
left us. I was just a kid... and she left me with that sick fuck...”

As Lily registered Gina’s
confession, the surge of grief that had hit her before was suddenly spiralling
out of control. Tears poured from her eyes. She couldn’t breathe, all the air
taken from her. She felt winded, as if an enormous fist of sensibility had
punctured a hole in her lungs.

How she longed to turn back
the clock. If only she had spoken to Gina about her home life more than she had
when they had been children. If only she had acted on her gut instinct and
pressed Gina for information about her father. Maybe she could have
prevented...

All of a sudden, Gina groaned
loudly, and Lily registered that something was wrong. “Gina?”

“It hurts!” she cried.

“What hurts, G?”

A coughing fit began, and Gina
was thrown forward by the sheer violence of her choking and spluttering. Lily
repositioned herself upon her knees and rubbed her friend’s back. She could see
her spine poking out beneath her flesh and the feel of Gina’s tiny bones
beneath her fingers brought more tears to her eyes.

She was really choking now,
and Lily’s panic was about to peak when there were finally voices at the front
door. “In here! In here!” she screamed as Gina convulsed beneath her hands. “Please,
hurry!”

When two paramedics rushed
into the room, Lily was lost in hysteria. It was as if somehow, now that the
ambulance crew was there, she could let herself go. She screamed, no longer
able to hold her nerve. She felt herself being lifted from the floor onto the
couch, and her screams soon died away into sobering sobs as a hand caressed her
shoulders. “What’s her name?” the female paramedic asked.

“Gina Watson!” 

Lily watched the scene before
her. The paramedics were now talking to Gina and passing urgent orders to one
another. Their cases of medical equipment were open and strewn across the floor
as they began to work on her friend. She heard the word ‘user’ and a little
afterwards ‘chronic pneumonia’, but it was the words that came a few minutes later,
as she dazedly watched the whirlwind of activity before her, that stunned her
into a numbing silence: ‘She’s gone. Let’s take her in.’

Lily was suddenly outside of
herself, overwhelmed by horror. Her blue eyes darted from one paramedic to
another, then to her friend. But Gina was no longer visible beneath the pale
blue quilt that had been placed over her face and body. Lily didn’t register
that the female paramedic had sat beside her again until she spoke. “What is
your name, love?”

“Lily,” she whispered
distractedly as her focus remained on the blue blanket in the shape of her
friend’s profile.

“Are you a friend?”

She nodded.

“Is there any family of Gina’s
that we can contact?”

Lily tore her eyes away and
looked up at the woman in uniform. She shook her head slowly. “No, she has no
one,” she whispered, and the realisation of this fact hit her like a freight
train.
Gina had had no one
. No one had cared for her and no one, except
her and Aiden, would even notice that she was gone.

“The problem was, I never
loved Gina. I understand now that she loved me very much. She was a thing of
beauty, in her own strange way. I miss her.”

Aiden Foster

(1969–2002)

HMP Maidstone

7
^th
December
2001

“Aiden, can I have a word?” Frankie called from the factory
office. It was late. All packages had been offloaded and were on their way to
London. Aiden was to follow the men back, leaving just Frankie at the factory
to lock up.

Aiden stepped inside the
office, swinging his car keys around his index finger. He took a seat at the
pinewood desk and Frankie sat in a larger chair opposite him. “What’s up?” he
asked, relaxing comfortably in his chair and placing a foot over his knee.

Frankie surveyed him for a
long moment. Aiden was wearing smart jeans, Caterpillar boots and a thick,
woollen Stone Island jumper. His black hair was scruffy but stylish, his square
jaw shaven, and his ocean-blue eyes were twinkling with intrigue. Aiden knew he
looked good enough to eat, even when casual, and he got the impression, as
always, that Frankie was eyeing him up.

He didn’t really care anymore.
Since he’d found out the truth about Frankie’s sexual preferences he hadn’t
said a word. He couldn’t allow it to affect their working relationship. He was
getting it too good with Frankie and, if truth be told, he used the fact that
Frankie was attracted to him for his own gain. Frankie was like putty in his
hands, and he didn’t give a flying fuck how much it rubbed the other workers up
the wrong way.

“We’ve been doing alright, you
and me, haven’t we?” Frankie asked, finishing his question on a faint smile.

“Yeah, everything’s good...”

“And you’re not getting any
grief... from the others?”

Aiden smirked. “There’s always
grief, Frankie. I just tend not to give a fuck.”

Frankie’s smile widened into a
grin. “There’s a good lad.” He paused. He was drinking Aiden in again and not
being very inconspicuous about it either. Dragging himself out of his reverie,
he went on, “We may have to take a trip to Europe in the next couple of weeks.”

Aiden frowned. This was news
to him. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business,” Frankie replied,
though by the look in his beady eyes, Aiden wondered whether he wanted a bit of
the latter too. “We can do pleasure another time. Italy maybe, like I said
before...”

“What’s the trip for?”

“I want you to meet a friend
of mine. He manages shipments from Germany but he also sources benzocaine from
Spain.”

Aiden nodded. “Alright, give
me the dates and I’ll let Lily know.”

Frankie sat forward in his
chair and clasped his hands together. “We make a good team, you and I, Aiden.”
He smiled fondly and Aiden quivered a smile back at him.

“I’d best be off...”