The Edge of Me (10 page)

I say, ‘When?’

‘What?’

‘When can we go?’

He stands up away from the wall. The voices are closer now.

‘Tomorrow night. Late. After lights out. Meet me outside by the bins?’

‘OK,’ I say.

He says, ‘It’s going to be hard work, the fence. It won’t be easy.’

That makes me think about Andjela. I don’t know if
I’ll
be able to do it let alone her. As I’m thinking about when and how to tell Joe about her, he does something so unexpected that it takes my breath away. He leans down
and hooks a strand of hair from my stubby fringe that escaped the scissors. His touch still makes me blush, and in spite of the cold, I can feel my skin redden and tingle.

‘Look after yourself,’ he says and disappears. A man enters the room and speaks to me in Serbian, gesturing to the bin.

I say,
‘Da, da.’

I shoulder the bin and as I track back across the yard I stop for a moment to check out the fence. It’s about twenty feet high and made of a dense mesh of thick wire. But there’s enough room in the loops for hand and footholds. Just.

I tell Andjela about the plan. Calling it a
plan
makes it seem more realistic than it actually is. Right now, it’s just a thing we’re going to try. But as she watches me intently, I start to believe that, what the hell, it might just be possible. And I know she’s coming with us. I know I can’t leave her behind.

In the morning, we awake to water ringing against a tin bucket in the corridor. A fierce gale is blowing down from the mountain driving grey sheets of rain before it.

Later, I’m summoned to Milanković’s office. As before, I wait on the tiny stool outside but this time she’s not in her room. I hear her thighs in their thick orange tights squeaking against each other as she approaches.

She stops in front of me. ‘Inside.’

She settles herself in her chair, lights up a cigarette and turns her small eyes on me. I wait. She coughs into her fist once, twice, and leans towards me over the table.
‘I have something for you.’

Just then there’s a knock at the door and she hoists herself out of her chair, making the wood creak and whine. It’s one of the kitchen women and she’s not happy about something. There’s a short exchange and Milanković goes out, closing the door behind her saying, ‘Wait.’

I stand still, listening to the rain drumming against the panes and the sound of voices rising and falling from behind the door. The desk is littered with her grubby leavings, like the nest of some outsized squirrel: biscuit crumbs, dead flowers, what looks like a pair of socks, a paper knife, and a jumble of thin cardboard files lying across the desk at odd angles.

At the top of each file is a small tin clip with a name on it. I don’t know what makes me look, but I do. I crane forward to see better and my heart stops because near the bottom of the pile is one with a name I recognise, one I’ve carried with me from London:
Senka Hadžić
.

I can
feel
her hand on the door handle before I hear it, and, without thinking, I slide out the contents. I pull off the name tag and attach it to another file. I fold the papers and stuff them down my sock. When she comes back into the room, I’m there with my head bowed, waiting. Against my skin, the paper shifts and scratches and settles.

She sits down again and picks her teeth distractedly. I look up at her.

‘Yes … yes. I have something. Your parents. Your father …’

It’s not what I expect and it winds me. I manage,
‘What?’

She tugs at a drawer in her desk and takes out a piece of folded notepaper.

‘A message. From your father.’

‘He was here?’

She shakes her head. ‘No.’

She holds it out to me, pinched between finger and thumb, and I reach for it slowly. The paper’s been wet and it crackles in my hand as I open it. My father’s scrawling hand in black ink that has run like tears down the page:

I read it once and then again. And what I’ve carried with me for so long, that
blankness
, that quiet obedience just granulates and scatters on the floor. That there’s someone who, in his way,
did
care about me, did think about me, is
sorry
, makes everything so much harder.
I suck the paper into my fist, and I run. All I can hear is the hammer of my feet on stone, on wood and on concrete. The ground rolling under me and the rain beating down. Then I’m outside where the walls lean and tower and the high windows watch me.

Two minutes on, there’s a hand on my shoulder.

‘Inside.
Now!’

I let myself be taken into the kitchen where the two kitchen women snitch and sneer at me. Milanković’s hair has all but collapsed in the rain, and one of them offers a filthy tea towel which she declines.

Instead, she picks through a bucket of kitchen implements until she finds what she’s looking for: a sturdy wooden ladle. She brings it down on my head and sides and arms and I stumble and fall. I crouch with my arms over my head but she keeps hitting me. All I can see and hear and feel is pain. Pain like something is living inside me and pushing under my skin to get out. When I open my eyes, it’s still raining but I can hear the crows again. I see her standing over me:

‘You are spoiled stupid girl. You will learn how to behave.’

I’m learning fast.

12

I don’t know how long I lie there, curled tight on the kitchen floor. Small things buzz in and out of my consciousness: cracked flagstones, the reek of cinder and fat from the ovens and the steady beat of rain on glass. Pain and heat all over my body. I push against the cold stone to ease it. Very slowly, I lift my head and through the grimy windows I see the mountains, and in the foreground, the fence.

The papers I took are still there, I can feel them chafe at my ankle.

Then there are fingers on my shoulders and a low murmuring, and I’m helped to my feet. It’s Andjela. I find I can hardly stand. I lean against her and, hopping and limping, we make it upstairs. On the bed with my knees pulled into my chest, I let myself cry. She watches me with her head on one side like a curious starling, and after a while she leans in and opens her arms and pulls me into a bony embrace.

‘Friend,’ she whispers in English.

I return it: ‘Friend.’

I lie back. She covers me with a blanket. A tent. A rind. A shield. I’m still breathing. I’m still here. I hear her footsteps die away across the floor and I’m alone. I think about my father, about what he wrote. Deep down, I always knew it: that whatever I had or thought I had was never quite
real
.

But this: this is real. And all that matters now is to get out, over the wire, to run from all this. And in spite of what’s just happened I’m ready for it.

Andjela returns in a while with some soup and bread. She sits me up and watches me eat it. When I’m done, I stretch out my legs and look at myself. I roll up my trousers and my legs are black with bruises. My arms and sides too. They cover my body in dark blooms. We look at each other and her hand in mine is bent into a fist, hard as rock.

Later, much later, when the rooms are quiet and all I can hear is the hum of breathing, shallow and deep, and the occasional rustle or dreaming moan, we’re ready.

Andjela has traded bread for two wool jackets, both unravelling at the sleeves, one for each of us. We work our way silently down the stairs and out towards the kitchens and the back door. The rain has got worse, the storm is directly overhead and repeated tails of lightning crosses the sky and illuminate our faces. I catch Andjela, pale as a ghost, mouth agape as I pull her on. A rat scuttles across our path in the darkness and for a moment its eyes are red pin points of light. The kitchens are bolted but Andjela
shows me a small serving hatch in the refectory. It’s only a little wider than a dinner plate but she manages to push herself through it, wriggling and squirming. She lets me in and we go to the back door.

It’s padlocked.

We stand in the kitchen, watching the rain against the glass, searching the blackness beyond for Joe. Minutes pass and all I can hear is our breath. We don’t talk. We don’t look at each other.

And then: in the yard, I see him. An indistinct figure, hunched against the rain, waiting.

I start looking frantically in the drawers and tins for something,
anything
, that we can use to break the window or cut the chain on the padlock. Then there’s an almighty crack of thunder close overhead and when I turn, I see Andjela holding the ladle that Milanković used on me. Behind her, the pane in the door is smashed, and all around her feet, glass glitters in the lightning glare.

At once the figure bolts. He’s on us, peering through the broken glass.

It’s not Joe.

He thrusts a hand through the hole in the glass and grabs Andjela by the neck. I see him, his hair lashed wet against his face, his eyes dark pits: Mirko. Still holding her around the neck, he hoists himself through the broken pane and into the room. When he stands in front of us, the skin on his arms is cut from wrist to elbow.

‘You going somewhere?’ he hisses. Andjela’s jaw is reddening above his fist; she stays very still, her eyes wide.

‘Let her go!’ I say. Never taking his eyes off me, he pushes Andjela to the floor. She tries to twist away from him but it’s hopeless. I’m frozen: I see his breath hang in the air over her; I see her staring eyes, her hands up clawing at his. I cast about for something to stop it, to stop him. All over the floor are shards of glass. I see one big enough behind him near the door, I take it up and I pitch it hard into his neck and wrench it out.

Everything stops. His hands are still around Andjela’s throat, she’s struggling to breathe, her face blue, and then there’s a bulge under his skin, and a hot stream of blood shoots upward and spatters the ceiling. He lurches forward and falls on top of Andjela, a steady pulse of blood leaching from the wound. I kneel and push his bulk off her and roll her on to her side where she coughs and retches. Already I can hear the sound of voices from far above us.

We have to get out now.

I force Andjela to her feet, turn her to face me. ‘Ready?’

She nods quickly. We crouch down and I crawl to the broken door with her close at my heels. I can hear footsteps in the corridor leading to the refectory, the faint clink of keys.

I ease myself through what remains of the door, sharp little teeth of glass snatching at my arms and sides, turn and help Andjela, then through the boiling storm we dash towards the shelter of the bins and wait.

There’s no sign of Joe.

A light is turned on in the kitchen and a cry goes up.

‘Come on!’ I look around in panic and there’s someone there right in front of me. At once, I raise my hand in defence but he checks me, holds me. It’s Joe.

‘Where have you been?’ I cry.

‘There was a guy out there, I had to wait …’

Mirko: the glass in my fist. In his flesh
.
Blood high on the walls
.

‘Who’s this?’ Joe says, looking at Andjela.

‘She’s my friend,’ I say and her eyes are on me, sharp as vinegar. ‘She’s coming with us.’

Over in the kitchen, it appears to be quiet, but then the slow whine of the alarm sounding. It gets louder and louder, screaming against the night.

Joe says, ‘Come on.’

We run for it.

The rain is horizontal, whipping at our faces. We get to the fence and suddenly it looks so much taller than it did before. It towers above us, a criss-cross of gunmetal wire. I stare up at it in horror until Joe gives me a gentle push and says, ‘Climb!’

To my left, Andjela has already kicked off her shoes, thrown them over the fence into the dense forest beyond and she’s climbing, her white fingers clawing at the metal, and her hair, a dark liquid. I keep my boots on – the papers still tucked inside them – and grip the wet mesh. I haul myself up after Joe. He’s already a few feet above me. The pain in my side bites as I reach upwards, and the wire digs into my hands.

Joe calls out, ‘Don’t look down! Come on Sanda!’

Inch by inch, we leave the ground behind us and
crawl up like insects. Thunder slices the air, and I feel I’m climbing into it: into the sky. I look back at the buildings. I’m level with the first floor now. At that moment, a sheet of lightning illuminates the brickwork. That’s when I see the face, framed in a ground-floor window and lit for seconds by the glow. Watching us. No. Watching me. Her face. My face. She has
my
face: a shock of short hair, pale skin, a pointed chin.
I am seeing myself
. She puts up a hand in a kind of salute. A smile and she vanishes.

I hang there, my boots slipping and sliding on the wire. I can’t feel my fingers.

Then I hit the ground with a thud.

Andjela screams and I hear Joe’s voice above me. I hear the sound of it but I can’t make out the words. And then the whack of his feet beside me sending up a shower of mud.

‘What happened?’ he says. ‘Are you OK?’

And then I hear it above the alarm: a high-pitched howl at first, then a baying. The dogs are straining at their chains.

‘Shit!
Get up Sanda! Can you get up?’

He helps me up. Pain rips through me like a firework. Another bolt of lightning and I see the window – a black square. Did I imagine it? Joe’s shouting:
‘Come on!’

We’re on the fence again when there’s a wrenching sound, a fierce barking and a cry, and Joe falls back to the ground rolling and clutching his leg.

One of the dogs has got loose from its leash and is snarling and jumping at him, its teeth bone white in a black mouth. I get off the fence and yell at it, wave my
arms, but it doesn’t move. In desperation I kick its flank. It wheels round, jaws snapping, then, it turns again, agitated. I pull Joe to his feet and we start up the fence again. I glance at Joe, see the blood washing out of him.