“Yeah, so everyone keeps telling me.”
And then, would you believe it, it turned out that it was.
Dropping the charges! Laura wanted to dance. She wanted to fling her arms around Nervous Guy, she wanted to kiss him on the mouth, she wanted to rip off all her clothes and run screaming around the remand center. They’re dropping the charges. They’re dropping the fucking charges!
She managed to control herself, but she did scramble to her feet, yelping like a puppy, “I can go? I can just go?”
“Yes!” Nervous Guy looked almost as relieved as she was. “Well, no. I mean, not right away. There’s paperwork. There will be some forms I’ll need you to sign and . . . Is there anyone you’d like me to call? Someone you’d like to come and pick you up?”
Her mother. No, not her mother. Her father. But that would mean a confrontation with Deidre; that would kill her buzz stone dead. It was pathetic, really, when you thought about it; she’d no one, no one at all.
“Could you call my friend Irene?” she heard herself ask.
“Irene?” He readied his pen. “And she’s . . . a family member, is she? Or a friend?”
“She’s my best mate,” Laura said.
* * *
It was like flying.
No, it wasn’t like flying at all, actually, it was like her insides had been knotted up, for ages and ages, weeks and months and years, and then all of a sudden, someone had come along and unpicked the knots, and everything had been able to unravel, and the hardness in her belly was gone, the fire dampened down, the cramp and ache, the tortured, twisted feeling, it was gone, and finally—finally!—she could stand up straight! She could stand up straight, shoulders back, boobs out, she could breathe. She could fill her lungs. She could sing, if she wanted to, she could sing.
There was Laura, singing, Well I told you I loved you, now what more can I do?
The nice guard told her to go to her room and get her things together, then go up to the canteen and have some lunch because it would probably be a while before they had all the paperwork sorted and she was bound to be starving and she’d have nothing in when she got home, would she? The knots started to retie themselves, but Laura pulled herself up straighter still, she stretched her arms right up over her head, she quickened her pace.
Told you I loved you, you beat my heart black and blue.
There was Laura, smiling to herself, head buzzing and skin tingling, skipping along, tripping along toward her room when, from the opposite direction, came a big girl with a nose ring who, three days ago in the canteen, apropos of nothing, had called her a fucking ugly gimp cunt and told her she was going to cut her face next time she saw her.
Told you I loved you, now what more can I do?
The big girl hadn’t seen Laura yet; she was talking to her friend, smaller but squat, powerful-looking, not one you’d mess with either.
Do you want me to lay down and die for you?
There was Laura, singing, but keeping her head down all the while, chin to chest, don’t look up, don’t catch her eye, whatever you do, don’t catch her eye. The big girl was getting closer, she was laughing at something her squat friend was saying, making a noise like a drain, exactly like a drain, and now there was Laura, laughing too, head still down but laughing, unable to stop herself because it was funny, it was just plain funny, undeniably funny, that drainlike sound coming from the girl’s wide ugly mouth.
There was Laura, her head wasn’t down anymore, it was up, she saw the big girl’s smile turn into a snarl, heard her friend say what the fuck, and there was Laura, laughing like a loon, like a bell, like a swarm of flies.
There was Laura, her head smacking the linoleum floor. There was Laura, screaming in agony as a boot slammed down on her hand, there was Laura, struggling for breath, as the big girl knelt on her chest.
Here I am here I am here I am.
There she was.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Three days it had been since Irene last left the house. Three days, or four? She wasn’t sure; she only knew that she felt terribly tired. There was nothing in the fridge and she couldn’t face going out, couldn’t face the supermarket, the noise, all those people. What she really wanted to do was sleep, but she didn’t even have the energy to rouse herself from her chair and take herself upstairs. So she sat instead in her chair by the window, her fingers working constantly around the edge of the blanket placed over her knees.
She was thinking about William. She’d heard his voice not so long ago. She’d been looking for her cardigan, because the weather was still terrible, still very cold, and she’d walked from the living room to the kitchen to see if she’d left it, as she sometimes did, hanging on the back of the chair, and she heard him, clear as day. Fancy a cuppa, Reenie?