Nirvana Bites (16 page)

I stopped jumping. ‘Yeah. Sure.'

He hesitated a moment, but wouldn't meet my eyes.

‘Are you OK?' I asked.

‘Oh, sure,' he replied in a dull tone. ‘Are you?'

I plopped back down into the bath and stared at the lime-encrusted taps.

‘Me? Oh, I'm fine,' I whispered.

17

THE MORNING-AFTER
pill is a hormonal sledgehammer that crashes a wreaking path through your pelvic organs, creating oestrogen anarchy. The Asian chemist on the Walworth Road who had given it to me over the counter had been smug and censorious. He had played down the side-effects, but what did he know? He'd never have to subject his hormones to an equivalent battering. I filled in the requisite forms, automatically lying in response to every question on the general principle that you never tell the truth on an official form if you can avoid it. I spent the next day fighting nausea, cramps and an awesome foul mood.

I could tell Stan was getting twitchy and bored. He tried to interest me in cyber-sex on his laptop, but slunk off when I expressed total disinterest. He probably figured I had no need of virtual sex anyway, after what he'd seen the evening before.

For most of the day, he had the good sense to stay out of my way. But then he had to go and blow it. It was late afternoon and I was lying on my cushions with a hot water bottle and a trashy book. Stan flounced in and threw his designer-duds self into my only armchair. The springs creaked in protest. He sat for a while, huffing and fidgeting. I didn't look up from my book. He cleared his throat a few times, drummed his fingers on the worn armrests and crossed and recrossed his legs. I still didn't look up. He jumped up, walked over to the window, opened it, looked out, crashed it shut again and chucked himself back into the armchair. By this time, I was reading the same line over and over, but I was damned if I'd give him the satisfaction of getting my attention.

He realised he had to resort to more obvious means. He cleared his throat again.

‘I'm going out tonight.'

I still didn't look up. ‘No you're not,' I replied in an even tone.

‘Oh yes I bloody well am! You can't keep me here, you know! You can't stop me from getting up and going anywhere I damn well want!'

Ah. The petulant schoolboy routine. Well, I knew how to deal with that.

‘OK. Off you go then.' I carried on reading.

You know that Harry Enfield sketch, in which he plays Kevin, the ghastly floppy-haired teenager?' Well, here was Stanley Highshore, executive producer, media celebrity, highly respected mover and shaker, husband to a Tory MP, doing a more than passable impersonation of a middle-aged Kev.

He leapt out of the chair and stamped his foot. I swear I'm not lying about that. He really did.

‘I can't though, can I? You
know
I can't. It's not fair, you know. It's really not fair.' And then, introducing a little bit of grown-up speak, ‘The situation is quite intolerable. It is unacceptable.'

I was so taken with this performance that I put the book down, having carefully marked my place with a torn-off piece of a Rizla packet. On another day, one on which I wasn't burning up in Hormone Hell, I might have had a different reaction. I might have suggested he sit down so we could discuss things calmly. Maybe I'd have made him some tea. Sympathised a bit. Talked through options. But not today. You have to say this about Stan: either he has a lousy sense of timing, or his survival instincts were fucked. Maybe he'd played the part of the gimp in one too many sadomasochistic rituals and no longer knew when to back off

I swivelled to face him, grimacing at a hot stab of cramp in my belly.

‘So what the fuck are you
really
saying, Stan?'

I kept my voice even, but people who know me well know that's when I'm at my most dangerous. Stan didn't know me well.

‘What I'm really saying, Jenny, is that I'm paying you a very substantial sum of money so that I can get into a position where I am
not
afraid to set foot outside the door.'

‘And?'

‘And, as far as I can see, the only thing you've been successful in so far is spending that money. I see no results. I see no action. I see an escalation in the violence. And I see you – and I'm sorry, Jenny, but this needs to be said – I
see you
lying on the cushions reading a book.'

I was on my feet faster than if I'd been sprung from a slingshot, cramps or no cramps.

‘Get out!' I shrieked. ‘Get the fuck out of my home! Don't you dare, don't you fucking dare, come into
my home
and try to tell me how to spend a single fucking minute of my time! You think your money buys you that right? Do you? You arrogant, pigshit, arsehole fucker! You slimy dog-breath stapled scumbag!'

Stan was backing out of the room and up the hall, pushed by the sheer force of my invective.

‘You ungrateful, snivelling, insensitive piece of shite!
I‘ve
been fucking attacked.
My
windows have been smashed.
My
friends have been terrorised. And all for
you
. You! And now you have the balls, the utter bare-faced, bare-arsed
balls, to tell me I'm not doing anything for you. To tell me
– ME! – that I shouldn't be lying down and reading a fucking book. Who are you, eh? Who the fuck are you? I'll tell you who you're fucking
not
. You're not my teacher. You're not my boss.
AND YOU'RE NOT MY FUCKING FATHER!!!'

By now, Stan had backed into the kitchen. He was white-faced and sweaty. Cause and fucking effect, Stan. You caused it. Now you can stand there and feel the effect. He was in the corner, with nowhere else to go.

I grabbed something from the kitchen counter and waved it in his face. As it wafted across my vision, I realised it was a teaspoon. Unless I was going to use it to gouge bits out of him, it wasn't going to do me much good. I flung it down and it tinkled on the bare floorboards. The sound was good, but not enough. I followed it with a saucepan, a frying pan, a wok and the contents of my cutlery drawer. Nothing breakable, you notice. Even when I'm in a rage, I never lose it 100 per cent. There's always a tiny piece of me that can visualise sweeping up glass and crockery, missing bits and stepping on them in my bare feet, and not having a cup or a bowl when I need one.

The downstairs door to my flat crashed open and feet thundered up the stairs, adding to the cacophony.

‘What the fuck's going on?' Mags roared. ‘Jenny? Are you OK? Fucking hell. It's like living on the set of
Big Brother.'

I froze with my arms in the air holding a roasting tin aloft. I took a deep breath. Stan was crouched in the corner with his hands wrapped over the top of his head.

‘Stan wants to go out,' I said. ‘And he thinks we're not doing enough to justify what he's paying us.'

Mags's lips curled in a malevolent smile. Her eyes glistened as she looked at Stan with an almost maternal air.

‘Well, you're free to go, Stan,' she said, her voice deceptively sweet. ‘Leave whenever you like. But I'll tell you this. And you'd better listen and listen very carefully indeed. If you stay here, there's something you have to understand. Jenny here has opened her home to you, allowed you to take over her life – endangering her own and those of her friends – and has shown you every hospitality. Now, in the circles you move in, maybe that comes cheap. I don't know. But I doubt it very much. But in the circles
we
move in, that demands more than just money. It demands…' Mags paused for effect. I love to see Mags in full flow. She does that intimidate-the-white-man bit so very well. ‘It demands
RESPECT. Do I make myself clear
…' Mags rose up on her toes and stretched to her full majestic height so that she loomed over Stan like a tower block over a dolls' house. ‘BWOY!'

To his credit, Stan remained conscious. His nostrils flared and he swallowed hard as he nodded timid acquiescence. I don't know if it was fear of the wolves outside or the lionesses inside, but he had the air of a sacrificial lamb granted a temporary stay of execution.

‘Now,' said Mags, her voice reverting back to its former scary sweetness. ‘Do you have anything to say to Jenny?'

Stan unfolded himself from the corner in which he'd been crouching.

‘Sorry, Jenny,' he mumbled. He looked at Mags, who raised an eyebrow indicating that more was required. ‘Um. I was out of order. I had no right to say what I did. It was crass and insensitive.' Mags nodded encouragement. ‘I – I know you've put yourself out no end on my account. And – and I'm very grateful. Thanks. And – um – sorry. Again. And – ' another swift glance at Mags the Mountain – 'and – uh – I'd like to stay. If that's all right with you…'

I lowered my arms and put the roasting tin down on top of the cooker. I gave a regal nod and turned on my heel. Mags went back downstairs and I returned to my cushions and my book. In the kitchen, I could hear the sounds of Stan clearing up.

18

THE NEXT DAY
, hormones still a-hopping, I jumped on a number 12 and headed for St Thomas's. Although my reaction to Stan's attempted power trip had been entirely justified, his words had nevertheless stung me. There was no way I was going to spend another day mooning round in Oestrogenville.

At the hospital I gave Della's name to the grey-haired woman sitting at the reception desk. She checked her screen and told me Della was no longer in Intensive Care. She directed me to a fifth-floor ward accessible by negotiating a maze of corridors, several banks of lifts and at least two faces of the Eiger.

First, I bought an armful of the most exotic flowers available at the flashy florist's. The ground floor of St Thomas's is very weird. If it wasn't for the preponderance of tired-looking people in white coats and sick-looking people in jim-jams, you could be in any faceless shopping mall in any faceless suburb. Newsagents, cafés, gift shops, banks… Strange to think of the number of births, deaths and in-between pains filling the rest of the building.

I spent the next forty minutes lost in the labyrinth. By the time I arrived at Della's ward, I was in competition with the flowers to see which of us could wilt the fastest.

A young nurse with dark smudges under her eyes directed me down yet another corridor to Della's room.

‘I don't know if they'll let you see her, though,' she warned.

A bored-looking cop sat on an upright wooden chair outside Della's room, pensively picking his nose.

‘Can I go in?' I asked.

He looked me up and down. ‘And you are…?'

‘I'm a friend of Della's.'

He checked his watch and jotted down the time in a spiral-bound notebook.

‘Name?' he demanded.

I froze. I hate hospitals. And I hate cops even more. This was a hideous combination. I swallowed hard.

‘Jennifer Stern,' I replied. He noted it in the pad.

‘Address?'

That was a question too far for me. I gave Dennis and Kate's address without so much as a flicker of an eyelid. I knew the cops would be bound to check. I'd cross that bridge when I came to it.

‘Relationship to…' He indicated Della's door with a nod.

‘Friend. Like I said.'

He gave me a long, hard stare before hauling himself to his feet.

‘OK. You can go in. But I hope you're not expecting any scintillating conversation.'

He held the door open and I went into the room. A vast air-filled bed took up most of the space. There was a standard hospital-issue bedside cabinet and a sink with those long-handled taps you can turn on and off with your elbow.

The figure in the bed was unrecognisable as human, let alone as anyone I had once known. Della's skull was swathed in white bandages. Beneath them, a misshapen mass of bruised, swollen flesh was all that was visible of her face. I realised with a jolt that I'd never even seen her without make-up before. Her arms were heavily bandaged down to the fingertips. Tubes ran from the inside of one elbow to two drip bags on stands. Another tube snaked from under the sheets into a catheter bag filled with a noxious-looking fluid. From the end of the bed, traction wires ran from her legs to pendulous weights. There was a stench of decay in the room that the hospital disinfectant was unable to mask.

I stood rooted to the spot, my mouth dry and my stomach heaving.

‘Right bloody mess, isn't he?' said a voice at my shoulder.

I'd forgotten the cop was there and jumped at the sound.

‘Della's a she,' I replied automatically, unable to tear my eyes away from the inert figure on the bed.

‘I don't know what she is, to be honest. I mean she's got a…y'know.'

I took a deep breath.

‘Della's a pre-op transsexual.'

‘Do what?'

‘A chick with a dick,' I said, resorting to language I knew he'd understand.

‘Oh. Right. Bloody weird, if you ask me. Still, no one deserves that, I suppose.'

I pulled myself together with a superhuman effort. At the end of the bed, between the traction wires, was hooked a little stand containing Della's medical notes.

‘Mind if I look?' I asked, indicating the notes.

‘Don't see why not,' he shrugged.

I laid the flowers in the sink and checked out the notes. The first file was Della's drug chart. It had as many entries as the Yellow Pages. Della was pumped chockfull of opiates and other polysyllabic substances. It was a shame she wasn't in a position to appreciate them. A lot of the drugs were unknown to me, although I pride myself on having a broad knowledge of pharmaceuticals. Della liked the odd illegal drug, but was big on alternative therapy. I remember her once treating a raging chest infection with homoeopathy, refusing to resort to antibiotics on the grounds that they wrecked your immune system in the long term and gave you thrush in the short term. A nasty yeast infection would be the least of her worries now.