The Edge of Me (6 page)

‘Thanks.’

‘They’ll have to let you go. They’ll never get you out of the country.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. And I think again about that line separating us, and wonder if maybe it’s not between us but between me and the rest of the human race.

I start to cry quietly.

Joe crawls towards me in my corner and pats me awkwardly on the shoulder. ‘Sanda, it’s OK. It’ll be OK.’

I peer back at him in the gloom. He stands up, steadying himself on the furniture around us. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got your phone?’ he asks.

‘No. You?’

‘Dead. You were my last.’

I stand up. We’re moving fast now and I have to grab him to stop myself falling over.

‘Are you OK?’ I say.

‘Shut up Sanda.’

He wraps me up and holds me, my face against his chest, and then, very slowly, awkwardly, I inch my arms around his back, my hands stiff and tight. I breathe him in: leather and soap. I grow on him like moss on a stone.

I can hear the radio in the cab up front, tinny and persistent. Reluctantly, I pull away and sit back down against the side of the van.

‘They’ll have to stop soon,’ he says. He presses his watch and his face is illuminated in its blue flare. ‘It’s seven now, and I was at your house about quarter to five, so they probably know whatever they gave you will have worn
off and they’ll want to come and check.’

‘So, when they stop, what then?’

‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I’m not fucking James Bond.’

‘Right. No. Sorry.’

‘Stop saying sorry for Christ’s sake.’

‘Sorry.’ I twist my hair round my fingers till it hurts. Then I say, ‘Joe, I know you don’t have the answer. I know you’re not fucking James Bond.’

He laughs. ‘He’s not my type. Look, here’s what we do: we make a racket in the back here. They stop. They open up and we run for it.’

‘OK,’ I look around. ‘How about him?’ I point to the china dog.

‘Genius.’ He picks up the dog, lifts it over his head, mouths, ‘Ready?’ at me, and throws it against the side of the van. Nothing happens for a moment, then we feel the van slow down and stop with a jolt.

We stand on either side of the doors, our backs against the van walls and wait. My chest hurts and I’m fighting not to close my eyes.

The doors are flung open. I smell diesel oil, strong cigarettes like the type Dad smokes, and salt night air. A torch beam rakes the darkness.

‘Hey?’

Everything happens very quickly after that. Andrija climbs in, his face in shadow. Joe lunges towards him, smacks him in the jaw, and he reels backwards and falls.

I’m paralysed. I can hear Boris calling from the cab.

Joe reaches across for me. ‘Come on Sanda!’

I jump down, stumble, pick myself up. Andrija’s back on his feet. He takes a heavy swipe at me but misses, and I start sprinting after Joe into the night along a motorway verge with the taillights of cars whisking past. After a few minutes, he hauls me away from the road and up. We charge over a low fence and start scrambling up a steep bank. The night is clear and the sky is full of stars and I go up that slope like a mountain goat, my heart pounding, and I can hear the blood singing in my head as I climb.

Below us, on the motorway, there’s the low drone of traffic grinding the tarmac. And above us, beyond the ridge, fields, and sheep like little matchboxes. I push myself up on sods of wet earth, all the time watching Joe’s heels just ahead of me.

I can hear Andrija and Boris behind us and I make the stupid mistake of looking back to see how close they are. If I hadn’t done that, then everything might have been different but I do, and as I do, I lose my footing. I hit my head on something metal and sharp jutting out of the ground, and I close my eyes against the pain. I try to get up but the ground is holding on to me. Joe’s yelling my name but I just want to sleep. I’m drifting. I’m being dragged along the ground then lifted up.

Oblivion.

Rolling. Ground shifting under me. Swaying. I lean forward as much as I’m able and throw up. My head feels hot and tight like I’m wearing a close-fitting hat. It’s lighter here. There’s blood on my T-shirt. I remember banging my
head. We’re moving but not moving and as I try to edge away from the reek of my own vomit, I hear a shrieking caw in the distance: a seagull. Seagulls. I’m back in the van but I think we’re on a boat.

I struggle to sit upright. My hands are tied to the bars on the sides. They’ve used plastic straps like you get on boxes – impossible to get loose without scissors and another person to do the cutting.

I call softly, ‘Joe?
Joe
?’

No answer. Just the urgent screaming of the gulls from way overhead. Louder this time: ‘Joe!’

Nothing. I lean back and close my eyes.
Stay calm. You’re OK
. My head’s throbbing and my throat’s dry, and I can feel tears of panic coming. I try to put together what happened: we got out of the van. We were being chased up the slope in the dark. I remember falling, hitting my head, Joe calling to me, and then nothing. He was ahead of me. He must have got away. And there in the back of a dirty removal van with blood on my face and sick in my hair, I sob out everything. The aloneness mostly – that aloneness I’ve always tried to convince myself was cool, was how I liked it: it meant I didn’t need anyone. I’d watch the way Lauren’s family were, hugging each other all the time, laughing and stuff, and I’d say: ‘
It’s not for me – I’m not that insecure …’
Insecure? I wrote the fucking book. I’ve got nothing and no one, and even Joe who made it better for a while is gone.

I take a few deep breaths, swallow tears. I
am
in this on my own. So what’s new? I’ve always been on my own.
I’m going to have to rely on myself to get out of it.

But the thought that I’ve been trying to bury since this all started comes bouncing right up:
get out and go where, Sanda? Escape to what?

That makes me think about the cutting of Dad in my pocket: the group of men with their guns and camouflage, the different name. Dad in his pyjamas at three in the afternoon watching some crappy soap on the telly; Dad always rubbing at that scar on his neck; saying good night without looking at me. He never really looked at me. He always looked past me. What happened to make him that way?

It must have been something bad – someone or something that made him close up like that. Unless. Unless he’s the bad one? All that endless fighting with Mum, those anxious, whispered conversations in the kitchen. Which of them wanted to leave without me?

What were they mixed up in? And if they’re not who they say they are, then who am I? What kind of parents would just abandon their child? Like I’m nothing to them?

Maybe that’s exactly what I am. Maybe I’m not their child at all.

And then the next question is so obvious, I don’t want to ask it. I’m not going to ask it. Way in the back of my mind, I pull open a heavy wooden drawer, file it away for a later date, and slam it shut.

There’s a shout from outside.

A man’s voice calls, ‘Oi! Off the car deck please sir!’

Andrija’s voice in English – trying to be nice: ‘I’m sorry. I forgot my wallet. I’ll be quick.’

He’s opening the doors.

I call out, ‘Hey! Help me! HELP ME!’

In a second, he’s inside standing over me with balled fists. He says in Serbian: ‘Hey. Listen to me. You listening?’

I say nothing.

‘Let me explain to you,’ he hisses. ‘It’s easy. Why are you making it difficult? All you have to do is keep still and shut up.’

The sting of salt on my cheeks. His breath filling up the space between us. He brings a handkerchief from his pocket and crouches down. I think he’s going to wipe my face but instead he pushes the cloth over my nose and mouth and holds it there. There’s something on the cloth, something sweet-smelling but overpowering. And this time I don’t fight it. I breathe it. I pull whatever it is into myself, under my skin, and it burns and snatches at my throat and my chest but in the end there’s nothingness and that’s just the way I want it. I want to go to sleep. I don’t ever want to wake up.

The last thing I see is Andrija’s face and it merges in my head with my father’s and with the picture in the cutting.

7

Someone’s shaking me awake. The van’s not moving.

‘Sanda?’

‘Joe?’

I open my eyes. The light’s dim and I feel him before I see him. He’s got scissors and he’s bending over to untie me. And I feel his hand. Soft and rough, it folds mine inside it.

‘I thought you’d got away,’ I say, ‘I thought you’d …’

‘No. They … they got me. I wouldn’t have gone without …’

‘But where were you? I called you.’

He hesitates. He looks really shaken. There’s sweat on his neck. He sees me looking and rubs his throat.

‘They … they beat me up. I’ve been on the floor in the cab under the seats with a gun to my head most of the time.’

‘Oh my God, Joe.’

There’s another wait and it’s like he’s thinking about
telling me something but then he stops himself and says simply, ‘Don’t want to talk about it. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘They let me up on the boat to … to wash and stuff. They said if I made a move, they’d kill you.’

‘Oh Joe. I’m sorry.’

I feel his hand tighten around mine. ‘Are you OK?’ he says. I get a sense he’s recoiling ever so slightly. I guess I smell pretty bad.

‘Um, yeah. I think so. I may need a bath in the near future.’

‘You never looked better.’ It’s good to see him smile. ‘Listen, they’ve stopped at a service station. We’re in Belgium I think. I don’t know where we’re going. They won’t tell me, but they’ve said you can get washed and get some clothes and food and stuff. They’ve got showers here. Can you walk?’

He helps me to my feet, grabs a blanket from a pile on a cupboard and wraps it around me. He gives me a plastic carrier bag. ‘They got you some clothes and a towel.’

‘OK.’

He helps me down from the van and I make my way across the short stretch of concrete towards the welcoming entrance to the service station.

‘Where are they?’ I say.

‘Watching.’ He leads me to the showers and gives me a few coins. ‘Another thing …’

‘What?’

‘Do you … do you know someone called
Branko
?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Nor me. But they think I’m working for him.’

‘I’ve never heard the name before. Maybe it isn’t a name. Maybe it’s a company or something?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ He gestures to the showers. ‘I’ll let you go. Knock yourself out.’ He laughs weakly and stands back.

The tiles are cracked and greasy and the plughole is full of hairs but at least I’m a bolted door away from them. I look at myself in the mirror and take stock. Blood, tears, vomit. My left eye is swollen, and the cut from my fall shows purple and blue. I’m a mess. Carefully I pull out the newspaper cutting and the photograph from my pocket. I throw away my old clothes, but somehow it’s really important that I keep these pictures. They’re a kind of talisman, connecting me to something. A kind of answer – although what the question is I have no idea.

The hot water feels good and I emerge from the shower block in my new clothes, the cutting and the picture now safe in the pocket of a candy pink track suit that’s far too small for me. Joe’s face tells me all I need to know about how I look. Boris is with him and hustles us towards the van where Andrija is waiting.

He looks at me approvingly. ‘Good, good.’

I say in Serbian, ‘Andrija. Please?’

He looks at me with his head tilted sideways like a fat bird, ‘Hmm?’

‘Please, let my friend go. You don’t need him any more. Take me to my parents. He can go.’

Joe, who’s looking from Andrija to me, says, ‘Sanda, I know what you’re on about and no, I’m not leaving you. Not until you’re with your folks,’ and to Andrija, ‘I’m not leaving her.’

Andrija shakes his head and says to me in Serbian, ‘You think
you
can decide what happens? Your type doesn’t give orders to me.’

‘What?’
I say.

He thrusts his face in mine and I can see close up his furred teeth, pitted flesh, and smell the sweat on him.

‘You’ll know soon enough what you are. And this man,’ he looks at Joe, says in English, ‘I know who this man is. I know who’s paying you.’

Joe raises his hands in exasperation and says, ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Mmm,’ Andrija grins, and turns back to me. I try to step away but his hand is clamped on my shoulder. He whispers in English, ‘Why you think your parents left you?’

A great pit opens up and I’m on the edge looking down into a black nothing.

‘I … I …’

‘Mmm? Why do parent leave child?’ He tightens his grip on me and I feel his fingernails burrow into my skin. He leans forward, lowers his voice and it’s poison: ‘Because they don’t want you.’

I can feel Joe’s sympathy or something like it and I don’t want it. I want to fall into that pit and have the earth close up over me. Andrija shoves me against the side of the van and hisses in my ear: ‘You want to know
where am I taking you?’ Then in Serbian he says, ‘Back to where you belong.’

He pats me on the cheek and motions for both of us to get back in the van. Before he closes the door on us, he says with a glassy smile, ‘Time to eat. We’ll be there soon.’ We are each given a large baguette with limp lettuce escaping from either end.

I haven’t realised how hungry I am. Suddenly nothing else matters.

Later on I’m feeling a bit better: we’ve got the torch they left in the van. I’m clean and fed and listening to the hum of heavy traffic on either side of us. I sneak a look at Joe. And because nothing outside of here makes sense any more, that’s all the world is about: him and me, and his brown eyes in the torchlight. And because I’m feeling reckless or stupid or because nothing really matters any more, I say:

‘Joe?’

Straight away he says, ‘Don’t say sorry.’

I laugh, ‘I’m not going to.’

I was. I was going to start with that.

‘What then?’

It comes out then: ‘You know Camille?’

There’s a long pause then he says, ‘I … we’re not together any more. I mean, I don’t know if you knew, we used to go out.’