Now You See Me (2 page)

‘What about the van? Your stuff? And my stuff,' she said, thinking fast.

‘What stuff?'

‘My
stuff.
'

The sirens started.

‘No tax, no insurance, no MOT,' Greg said. ‘And no licence.'

‘What no
driving
licence?'

‘Come on.'

‘But my stuff!'

‘I didn't see any stuff. What stuff?'

‘Everything.'

‘I didn't see anything.'

‘I shoved it in the back.'

He looked at the van. For a horrible moment she thought he was going to go and look but he didn't.

‘We'll get you some more stuff,' he said. He patted his pocket. ‘Plastic. No problem.' He walked away, head down, hands in pockets. She stopped a minute, looking at the smash. There was definitely blood and oil and petrol and even milk running on the road.
Milk
. The screaming had stopped. Someone was talking into a mobile phone. The first police cars arrived, screeching up the wrong side of the central reservation.

She followed him along the hard shoulder till they came to a concrete flyover. They had to scramble up beside it and over the top into a dead place of wheel-trims and broken mirrors, oil cans and dirty spiky flowers. The air was solid with fumes. If you moved your arm it left a trail. He leant against the concrete of the bridge and pressed his hand into his side.

‘Think I've cracked a fucking rib,' he said. She started to shiver, the shock catching up with her. ‘Let's get out of here,' he said. They got over a fence into someone's garden. There was a climbing frame and a pink duvet cover drooping damply from the washing line. She couldn't move. It was the same duvet cover she'd had when she was small. The same pink, the same daisy pattern. She couldn't move. The sight of the duvet cover stopped her. She wanted to wrap herself up in it and just stop. Just stop, wrapped in the pink of it. But Greg grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the duvet cover and out on to a street with daffodils and street lamps still on even though it was light.

She could hardly feel her legs or make them go forward at all. She thought she was going to be sick. ‘Wanna lie down,' she said.

‘Come on.' Greg put his arm round her and they walked along the pavement. It was a dream, the path soft underfoot and shivers running through her like the shivering of trees. Her mouth wouldn't make any words at all. After a while they came to a main road with shops. He led her through a door that opened with a sharp ping and they were in a café. Her legs gave way as she got close to a chair and half fell on it. A woman's voice said, ‘She all right?' The cloth was plastic lace against her cheek. There was a chipped saucer near her nose and a squeezy tomato.

‘Two teas,' Greg said from miles above.

‘Ask no questions,' someone said to someone else. ‘Looks like she needs it.'

She didn't care what she looked like. She kept her face on the tablecloth and some time later heard a clinking close to her ear as he stirred her tea. ‘Come on then,' he said, ‘get it down you.'

She sat up. Her neck was weak and her hand shaking so much she could hardly lift the mug. Her skull felt like it was about to burst. Greg's hand was shaking too and half his tea went on the table. ‘Got any aspirin or anything?' she went. Greg asked the woman who said, ‘Yes, as it happens, Anadin. OK?'

Greg opened the box and gave her two and took two himself. The tablets stuck and she choked. They scraped bitterly down the back of her throat. She sipped the sweet stewed tea. He got out a fag and she nearly laughed at the way the lighter flame wavered everywhere before he could get it to meet the fag-end. His eyes were small blue chips of stone.

‘Is there a loo?' she said. He shrugged. She balanced on her legs to the counter, feeling faint.

‘Toilet?' she asked.

The woman sighed. ‘I'm too soft me. Through there,' and pointed to a door marked
Private
.

She went down a passage and into the toilet. She sat on the toilet lid and put her head between her knees till the blood ran back. She washed her face and hands and used some of the Nulon handcream that was there. In the mirror she saw that one of her cheeks was printed with the pattern of plastic lace. She combed her hair. She was OK.

There was a crate of milk cartons in the passage from the toilet and milk was leaking out on to the brown floor. She looked away.

‘OK now?' the woman asked when she came out.

‘Fine.'

There were two more mugs of tea on the table but it was too sweet. ‘Sugar for shock,' Greg said when she pulled a face. ‘Drink it.'

The sweetness made her feel sick. ‘All that and it's only half-past nine,' Greg said and suddenly a laugh came tearing out of her. She couldn't stop it. She laughed and laughed until tears were running into her mouth. Greg tried to stop her but then he caught it too.

The woman came over and said, ‘I can't have all this laughing in here. You'll have to leave if you don't stop laughing.' She looked as if she'd been sucking a lemon. They tried their best to stop but couldn't.

‘I'll call the police,' the woman warned. But it was as if they were having the laughter wrung out of them. She finally lost patience, opened the door and stood there pointing out into the street, until they got up and staggered out.

‘Drugs,' she said to someone as they left. ‘Sticks out a mile.'

When they got outside they only managed a few steps before collapsing on the ground. ‘It's not funny,' she kept trying to say but every time she nearly got it under control she remembered the way the woman had said
I'll call the police
like there were laugh police to stop you laughing and a whole new squeeze went through her.

‘This is hysteria,' Greg said and that started her off all over again, the solemn way he said
hysteria
, but in the end they did stop. And nothing was funny after that. It was a cold day in March. They had nearly been killed. The sky was high and grey and couldn't care less.

‘I can't get that arm out of my head,' she said.

‘Yeah,' Greg said. ‘What we need is a drink.'

But it was too early for a drink so they walked by a river and looked at willows and ducks. They wandered vaguely about. Other things were going on as normal: buses running; people wheeling babies; flowers flowering; birds and squirrels whisking through the trees while they walked by, leaning together to keep each other up.

Later they went into a pub and drank Guinness for a long time and shared a cheese sandwich. She was about as drunk as she'd ever been. She hadn't drunk a thing since before the hospital and wasn't used to it. They walked about afterwards like lovers, their arms tight round each other's waists. They stopped by a tree and he kissed her very softly on the lips. ‘I can't believe I've only known you a few hours,' he said.

She looked into his face and said, ‘Me neither,' because it looked so much like the right face. And it did feel like years had passed since she'd sneaked into his van and still more years since the crash.

‘You poor lamb,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘You seem so lost,' he said. ‘Can I call you Lamb?'

‘Why?'

‘It suits you.'

‘K,' I said.

We found a department store in the centre of town and he flashed his plastic and got me a rucksack, sleeping bag, knickers, jeans and two sweaters. He must have known I didn't have that much stuff before. All I'd had was my old satchel, and I
still
had that. I didn't feel too bad about it. They were things I needed and after all, he had nearly got me killed. We went in another pub and then to a hotel. The room had thick grey wallpaper like rhino hide and a fierce clanking radiator.

We lay on the bed and drank tea and watched TV. When I could get the arm out of my mind and stop thinking that it could have been me mashed to death – when I could get that out of my mind it was nice to be there with him. But I was worrying because the next thing to do was to have sex. And sure enough, after a while he rolled over and started to kiss me. The kissing was OK kissing with lots of different nips and sucks and licks not just his tongue rammed straight down my throat. It tasted very much of tobacco though, wet tobacco.

I froze. I tried not to. I don't know why or what happened. I kept my eyes open to look at him, his narrow lapiz eyes and crooked teeth, to tell myself I wanted this. He bought me all that stuff. I had to give him something back. But he ground his groin against me till it hurt and his sandpaper chin rubbed me raw. He put a condom on and tried to do it. But I had turned to stone. It was impossible. The trying hurt me and it must have hurt him too. I don't know what was wrong. What was wrong with me that I turned to stone like that? I do not know.

He stopped and looked at me for a minute before he rolled away. The look in his eyes. I couldn't stand to see that look in anybody's eyes again. He didn't thump or shout at me, just
looked
and turned away, groaned and shuddered like a dog and finished on his own. I stared at the matted smudge of hair at the back of his head until he finished.

He fastened his trousers with his back to me. He said he was going out to make a call. He could have made the call from the room but he went out. He didn't say, but of course it was to his girlfriend. After me he'd be dying to get back to Sammy, hummus sandwiches and all. I could just imagine her arched eyebrows winging upwards when he told her about the crash. Or maybe he wouldn't say. Who cares?

He came back and didn't look at me, just lit a cigarette. There was a
No Smoking
sign but I didn't like to say. We watched TV but then the news came on about a fatal motorway pile-up and I heard a din in my ears like drums. He changed channels to some football match.

When I woke in the morning he was gone. Well that's not true because I did wake and hear him leave at five o'clock. I turned over and pretended to be asleep because what was there to say?

Two

Best to be alone. Alone you can balance. You can concentrate. One foot after the other like a tightrope walker. You have to concentrate. You want no one hanging on your arm or your heart because then your balance is lost. Small and private and one thing after another thing with nothing strange. That is the way to be.

I know no one because of that. And that is fine. You meet people of course you do. But you imagine a field around you like radioactivity. And they are outside the field, the shield. Though you have to be prepared. But sometimes a person can slip in when you're not looking, not ready, when your head is somewhere else. Sometimes a person can hook straight in and put it all in danger – the order and the balance.

I keep my balance like this. I clean. I live in the same place. I have lived in the same place for months now and I got the work by lying and writing false letters. It is surprising what people will believe. And it is OK the cleaning, rubbing things, sweeping them, smoothing them. Being in the houses of people and usually alone. And even to have that little money which is clean money earned cleanly. And to rest my head on a pillow that is my pillow and in the same place every night. These are important things. The things I balance on.

I am sitting on the bed in my cellar. If you looked that's what you'd see. If anyone could see but no one can. It looks like I'm sitting on the bed but I am way up there, balancing. Trying to get it back, the balance. Because someone got to me when I was not ready, not looking out. My arms are spread and my toe is pointed and below me is the deep and dizzy world.

I first met him on a Wednesday at Mrs Banks'. I was hoovering the stairs, watching the fluff whisk into the roaring tube, when I got the feeling that someone was staring at me. I carried on for a minute thinking,
don't be daft
but my skin was prickling with the sensation of eyes. There is no scientific explanation for why skin can feel eyes on it but it can. I switched the cleaner off and looked up. And there he was, standing at the top of the stairs. He was wearing a dressing gown and staring down at me. With the dressing gown and his beard and the landing light shining like a halo behind his head he looked like something holy.

How dare a person be there like that when I thought I was alone? I said nothing, just stood and waited. If you say nothing the other person has to speak first to stop the silence. People can't bear silence. I wasn't scared. The door was behind me. I could run if I had to. I could kick.

He stood there so long I was beginning to lose my nerve but then he broke the spell and said, ‘Who the fuck are you?' He took a step down and I stepped back.

‘Who are you?' I said.

‘She's my mum,' he said after a while.

‘Mrs Banks?'

I didn't know what to think. Mrs Banks has got Roy, who's four, but she's never mentioned any other children. Why should she? It's not as if we're the best of mates. She doesn't look that old though, not old enough to have a son with a beard. If it was true though, everything was OK. He had a right to be there. I didn't know what to think.

He started coming down the stairs and I backed down with the hoover. He came a bit too close. His hair and his beard were black but his eyes were light in his olive face. They looked odd, pale silvery grey, like razor blades.

When you're alone in a place that's OK, that's good, long as you know you're alone. But if there's someone there, lurking, specially a strange man with such sharp grey eyes you don't know what to think. No point being mad at him. He was as surprised as me. I didn't know what to do or where to look. I wasn't going to switch the vacuum on again, not with him in the house. It makes you vulnerable. A person could creep up behind you in all that roar and you wouldn't hear till it was too late.

I went into the kitchen and he followed. He stood there watching me while I shoved the cleaner away. What was I supposed to do?