The Cut Read online

  I’ve had this dream, ever since I first read the Bible and went to church, about screwing on a cross, a cruci-fixation, you might call it. From shagging JJ to shagging JC.

  Course, it isn’t really Christ, it’s a young acolyte of some incense-heady church, one of those I don’t frequent. He tells me I must give my virginity to Jesus. Together we go to the centre of town where the wooden Easter cross is proudly standing by the war memorial. Under the spring stars we push the cross and heave at it together in a parody of the new settlers at some colony raising the sign of their God.

  It crashes to the ground. I lie down on the cross, my arms and legs extended, and I am bound, the rope chafing. I can see the stars. I can see the moon. My hands and feet are numb and I can feel my legs gaping open like a big mouth, ready to receive. I’m totally in control. Get down on me, I tell him. Do it now.

  When he enters me I am closing my eyes, thinking of Jesus being hammered to his cross, gouts of blood spurting up and splattering his flesh. I come, straining at my bonds. Powerful, beautiful pain. There are flowers opening in my mind, bright and blood-red, Easter flowers of renewal, blood-giving, life-giving. I’ve cut the vein and there’s the erection and the life, spurting inside my ready, bready body.

  *

  Kate has come in. I can hear her clattering around downstairs. I gather up the bits of her face into an envelope and slam them into a drawer.

  So the video shop was yesterday, right? All that stuff with JJ, that was ten weeks ago on my eighteenth birthday. And Kate’s been married to my father for eight months now.

  I’ve wanted to kill her fifteen times since then, each time for a particular, precise reason. I haven’t done it, yet. Obviously I haven’t really wanted to. When I really want to, I will.

  She knocks. I’m lying on my bed, reading.

  ‘Yeah?’

  She puts her styled blonde head around the door and gives me a glittery smile.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  No, I’d like you to put your head down the toilet. Of course, this isn’t what I say.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  I give Kate the sincere smile that I have perfected over the past year. The great thing about deceiving Kate is that it’s a deception based on total truth. I don’t like her. I have never liked her. But I’ve allowed her to believe that I have put aside my dislike. That I’ve buried the hatchet. That I’m making an effort. I don’t have to pretend that I really like her, I just have to pretend that I’m being polite.

  Whereas really, I am plotting her death.

  You see, no one gets in my way. That’s been my philosophy for a long time.

  Kate says, ‘Can we talk?’

  I sigh, fold my book up and put it to one side.

  *

  ‘The Cowbitch wanted to talk,’ I tell JJ. I’m out of breath, I’ve been running. ‘So where are we going?’

  He grins, leaning against the bollard in Promenade Avenue. ‘Not much choice in this dump, is there?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say thoughtfully, and he’s lit the cigarette I’ve flipped out before I even realize it. ‘Makes you wonder where people go in this town. Real people, I mean.’

  We are not real people. We are from what’s euphemistically called Middle England. People in council-tax bands E and F. Our parents have gravel on their drives, are nearing the end of the mortgage payments and could just have afforded to send some of us to public school, if they made economies. Some of them have swimming-pools and time-shares in France.

  Sickening, isn’t it?

  No, not really. I rather like having money. Gives me the chance to do all the things I need to do. Just another year, and I’ll be out of this dead-end town, and I’ve got to make sure I’ve rounded myself before I get off to college. I’ve always had and done what I wanted, and I see no reason to stop now. I’ve never wanted to do any of the things that were arranged for me – cookery classes, music lessons, the church. I want to drink, dance and screw, and there’s not much else to do. Got it?

  I’m off with JJ down the street, arm in arm and out for fun.

  *

  Kate’s sitting on my bed. She’s wearing a red pullover with bumpy patterns like cake icing, and swirly black and white yin-yang leggings. They’re the kind of leggings you wear when you are eighteen. And you need to get laid that night. And you haven’t got big rumply cellulite. None of these, I have to say, applies to Kate.

  ‘I need to ask you something,’ she says, smiling sweetly.

  Her foundation almost splits. Her pink lipstick doesn’t quite mask the fact that her lips are cracking. She obviously doesn’t know about running a toothbrush over them now and then, to help your pouting and smoothness. I know all these tricks, but I’m not telling Kate anything.

  ‘Do you . . . intend to do anything this summer?’ she inquires, with her cake-icing face sweet and demure. I’d love to plunge a knife right into it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I’ve drawn my knees up, clasped my hands around them.

  ‘Your father and I were just wondering if you were planning to stay in town, or if you were . . . going away anywhere. And if you’re staying, whether you were planning to . . . get a job of any sort.’

  A job?

  Is she kidding?

  Let me put it this way. My father’s annual income is something in the region of ninety K after tax. Kate, as far as I’m aware, has always been a professional housewife. Oh, sorry, am I meant to say ‘Domestic Incarceration Survivor’ these days? You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve never been in the PFC brigade.

  Anyway, that all went horribly wrong the first time round – messy marriage, all the usual stuff. Want to know how it went? In three words: antinomy, acrimony, alimony. Marriage might be grand, but divorce is ten grand.

  As soon as she was a free woman, moneyed for nothing (and her kicks for free) off she went in search of another saccharine-daddy, another income to take out. She found my father at some industry ball, which she was attending with a couple of her many men. One on each arm. (Some people are detached when it comes to relationships. Others are what you might call semi-detached. Kate, I have learnt, was always what you might call terraced.)

  She had the whole house done out by an interior designer as soon as she moved in. Except my bedroom. No one was touching that. She still goes on about it sometimes, about ‘co-ordinating’ the furniture, whatever that means. I chose the furniture in this room specially not to co-ordinate. She had the lounge done in powder-blue and navy, with shell-shaped dishes on blue marble tables, an eggshell-blue carpet, thick navy velvet curtains tied back with gold and aquamarine tassels. She had matching high-backed wooden chairs put in the dining-room, and went through all the cutlery and crockery making sure it matched her new selection of tablecloths (mustard yellow and kiwi green).

  Then she started asking round about gardeners, and had one in to transform the three acres of scraggy countryside into a Good Housekeeping showpiece. Green-jelly smoothness. Chocolate trees. Flowers in aniseed-ball red and sherbet yellow and peppermint white. All we needed was a gingerbread roof and I could feel justified in shoving her in the oven.

  My father was delighted. At last, someone who would take control of all those fiddly, fussy things like decor and entertaining and the garden. I mean, I can see how it happened. I was all for having someone in to look after the house, because, fuck it, I’m not doing my own dirty washing. So having a Woman Who Does was appealing. But she did too much. There was no need for him to marry the cow.

  Someone weaker, stupider maybe, would have hated him for it. Felt betrayed. But that would have been too easy, and she’d have loved it. As far as I’m concerned, he’s just to be pitied. It’s her I hate, this woman who stepped into our life and made my father think there was a need for things like drinks parties, landscaped gardens and elaborately folded napkins. People create these needs in society to give themselves sinecures – what use, otherwise, would there be in jobs like style consultants and catering-servic
e managers and interior designers?

  So what I say is, ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  Meaning – if a stupid bitch like you can sponge off my dad, there’s no way you’re telling me that I can’t.

  Kate sighs, and has a little smile to herself, as if to say, How can I tell her? Maybe she’ll understand when she’s older, and places her hands in her lap.

  ‘And also,’ she says, ‘as you are intending to stay here over the summer, your father and I aren’t really happy with the company you keep. We wonder whether it might be better for you to find some friends who are more . . . well, who are more suited to you. A better class of people.’

  I have to gulp down my rage, like bile. I can almost see it, spreading reddish-black across my face. And don’t you just hate people who talk in the plural? We wonder, we think, we feel. I force myself to look unperturbed.

  ‘I’m quite happy with the friends I have, thank you.’

  ‘Well,’ Kate says, strolling over to my bookshelf, and before I know it the bitch has actually started rearranging things on top of it. In a designer format, no doubt. Is that what you’ve learnt from Bookcase Monthly, Kate? The spring look for paperweights is Edge, while note-blocks should be set at a thirty-degree angle to pot-pourri? ‘Let’s see,’ she says. ‘Maybe things will work out.’

  So I think, yeah, maybe they will. Meaning, work out my way. And she’s no doubt thinking she’s got it her way, too. I have to bite the inside of my lip – so soft and slippery, like fish – to let her have the satisfaction. For now.

  Chapter Four – Nightcrawlers

  The bright glass rushes towards us, the size of a postcard in the dark, the size of a book – with the engine screaming – the size of the whole windscreen, the size of a fucking great shop window made of plate glass and full, brim-a-chock-a-block full, chock-a-block-a-noodle-doo-what-you-do-to-me full – of CRASH.

  *

  OK, so it’s fifty minutes before. I’m holding on to JJ, and Damien and Marcie are marching on ahead there, in the orange-blotched darkness, as we stagger down this warehouse-bordered backstreet, through the neon puddles, under the big girdery walkways. The sea glitters, there, through a crack. Kids are throwing stones down on the beach.

  Marcie’s leaping up and down and laughing. She rolls over the bonnet of this car, a Vauxhall Nova. She’s being a photo-model. The alarm screams, like an alien bird, and Marcie, staggering up from the other side of the car, shrieks with delight and does the alarm noise herself from her grit-smeared face.

  ‘It’s callin’ out to me!’ she shrieks, opening wide panda-eyes to me. Marcie’s mascara dribbles down her face, carving channels in the icing-sugar of her make-up.

  ‘Who’s gonna drive?’ I ask, looking at JJ. I remember that he is clean tonight. He was going to drive us home. Right? But he doesn’t seem steady on his feet. Those dark eyes look haunted. What the hell’s the matter with him?

  *

  Earlier, in the pub, JJ’s hand rests on my thigh.

  ‘Bel thinks she’s clever,’ he says airily, leaning back in the green leather seat. The pub burbles and wobbles around us. ‘She’s got three A levels and wants to go to university, so she thinks she knows it all.’

  ‘What university?’ It’s Marcie, a ghoul behind her haze of smoke and a wedding cake of glasses that she is building. She asks the question but doesn’t look at me. Probably because the answers wouldn’t mean much to her, and she knows it. She’s more interested in her glasses, anyway. Her hand’s trembling.

  ‘Western England, probably.’

  ‘Bristol fucking Poly,’ says Damien with a snigger, teeth snagging on his lip again the way they always do. I shoot him a murderous look.

  Marcie has a base of eight Guinness glasses – I don’t know where they came from – and on top of that a second layer of six lager glasses, which don’t form such a stable unit on account of their vase-shaped curves. Then, four wineglasses on top of that. She’s leaning over her shoulder now. Looking for small ones, from someone who’s been high in spirits.

  Damien, laughing contemptuously, flicks ash on the glasses and pretends to give them a push, then grins as if inviting the rest of us to admire his daring. Damien always looks self-satisfied. He’s got the face for it – a big, broad face, scrubbed and smooth, with a second chin just beginning to grow. He’s not fat; just contented-looking, well-fed. His hair’s collar-length and tucked behind his ears in a couple of sleek little curls. His face sometimes has an uncanny resemblance to that of those lipsticked slappers squeezed into black Lycra who sip their bilious-looking drinks on the techno floor at Luigi’s in Herne Bay. His teeth are unfortunate, and so are the hairs poking up above his collar. And the leather necklace is just tragic.

  ‘Wha’s fuckin’ pointa university?’ asks Marcie idly, as she balances another glass on top of her sculpture.

  I can’t help feeling that she’s secretly sniggering at me. ‘Lots of things,’ I snap at her, irritatedly crossing my legs. ‘It’s not just about academic work. You learn how to meet people, get on with people from all sorts of backgrounds.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says Marcie, her fingers slowly loosening their grip on her penultimate spirits glass. She gazes into the pyramid, her expression intent. Her thickly outlined eyes bulge with glassy distortion. ‘I went to the University of Life,’ she says casually.

  ‘Yeah,’ I retort, ‘but you got a Third.’

  Marcie balances her final glass. I expect she is still working out that last remark and isn’t aware that it’s an insult.

  Damien starts to snigger very loudly and obviously. His snigger becomes a snort. Marcie rounds on him, letting go of her final glass just that little bit too early. It wobbles, sending impulses through the entire structure.

  Only JJ and I have the sense to leap up as the pyramid collapses, smashing in a hundred pieces over the table and the floor.

  *

  So the Nova’s alarm goes off and Damien’s standing there smoking and trying to look cool, right? He’s a big long shadow in his coat, with a floating orange speck and a ghoul-face.

  And JJ’s restless and edgy, kicking puddles into shimmery rags, occasionally staring into the darkness as if he can see something a layer beyond the rest of us.

  Marcie slumps down by the wheel, knees up, eyes down, one hand dangling over her stockings like a limp fish. On a fishnet. Just a second ago she was rotating across the bonnet, now she’s totally gone. Came down with a thump on her arse, too.

  Something grabs me from inside. We have got to move one way or the other. We can’t stand here gawping at this shrieky car, with the kids from the beach looking over at us.

  Marcie’s face floats up at me. I have a sudden fear that I’m not holding on to reality, but then there’s the crisp blue siren of a police car from deep in the town, shrieking along with the car alarm, and before I know what I’m doing I’ve opened the door and people are bundling in after me.

  Marcie, with a big muddy stain on her yellow dress, somehow gets shoved in the passenger seat, and the two guys are behind, laughing. For some reason, Damien is blowing a raspberry. His fag-end is close to my neck. The Nova smells of heat, beer, smoke and oil.

  ‘If that touches me, you’re a dead man,’ I tell him. ‘JJ, got your knife?’

  JJ’s multi-purpose penknife, special import from America, flips over and lands in my lap. My own, you see, is my secret.

  I dig out some electrics and start getting the wires together. Marcie gurgles alarmingly and tries to lift her head up to see what I’m doing. She’s strapped in, and the belt’s all that stops her from lolling on to the dashboard. I don’t remember doing her up. Must have been JJ. One step ahead.

  ‘Marcie’s lost it,’ JJ points out, in that strangely calm, polite way of his. I suddenly get the idea that he will object morally to Marcie being in the car with us. He’s quite proper sometimes, like when he didn’t want to do it in the church. You wouldn’t have guessed it from those first words I heard
him say – Bloody bloody Mary, Mary! – but he’s looser when he’s had a lot to drink, and tonight he’s only had a bit. I’m glad I got to know him, or I could have got totally the wrong impression.

  I glance behind me. They look so different. Damien, with his brownish-red face, nodding and laughing – or leering, I suppose – at me. And JJ, sitting there with his hands folded in his lap, gazing out at the orange lights and the sea as if he isn’t really concerned with any of this. Bastard.

  A few more jiggles, and the engine coughs into life. We lose the alarm at the same moment, which is funny.

  ‘Hey!’ says Damien in delight. ‘Party time!’

  It’s as if I’m not here, now. Someone called Belinda Archard has taken control of everything like a teacher on a school trip. Belinda checks her mirrors, for Christ’s sake, she even checks her mirrors and Marcie’s belt. Right, then. Belinda’s in charge here. She almost feels like checking if everyone’s got their packed lunches, and taking a register.

  She giggles – no, she doesn’t. Belinda’s in charge, see, she’s the one who knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t giggle. She depresses the clutch, gets into gear, and hits the accelerator.

  The car jerks into action, and Marcie is in serious trouble now. Belinda swings the car round the warehouses so that the run up to the shoreline is dead ahead. She’s thinking about the route down to the beach, but she can see Damien laughing away in the back, that squawking laugh. The sea wall is ahead. They swing round and they’re whizzing past the ranks of spectral hotels. She can’t see JJ but she reckons he’s got a smug smile. Her mouth tastes of old beer, that dry-cask taste, and her eyes have gone suddenly heavy.

  She stops. Slams the brakes. Marcie lolls and shrieks, JJ swears quietly.

  Why did she stop? She got frightened. I got frightened.

  The town’s still. All we can hear is the water crashing on to the beach, and the engine purring, and my harsh breath. It sounds as bad as it feels, acid in my lungs.