I Came to Find a Girl (5 page)

“Good morning, madam.” The concierge looked down his long nose.

I pushed hard against the etched glass door, made it three steps round the corner and vomited. It helped. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. There was laughter in the distance but I couldn’t see anyone. I had to get away, get home and fast.
Stupid girl
– a claustrophobic feeling of self-loathing swept over me as my stomach churned. I lurched to another doorway and retched. I could hear people coming – they’d think I was some useless drunk – if I could just keep it together. Again, my stomach heaved.

I swayed down High Pavement, my boots stomping heavily against the cobblestones as I fled further from the hotel.
Stupid Girl, You Stupid Girl
, an angry, combative song filled my head. It was by a band I really liked but I couldn’t remember their name, not at that moment while everything was so hazy and confused. But I could remember the tune and the way the sexy, edgy lead singer, with her kohl-rimmed eyes, spat out the words with such venom.

I had escaped the Lace Market area but still I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting Jack Flood to be flitting between the shadows, tracking me down intent on finishing whatever weird, perverse assault he’d already begun. But no, he’d had his fun. Why would he leave the comfort of his luxury hotel suite to follow me? Oh God, what if it’s like he’s given me a head start, like he enjoys being in pursuit. That sick feeling rose again and I made another involuntary pathetic desperate sound, something like a yelp.

I rushed on and reached Market Square. It was so late the drunks had mostly gone. There was a police van though, at the far end, its blue light flashing. I considered walking over, wondered if I should talk to someone. But what would I say? I didn’t know what had happened. And besides, what if it were a male officer? How could I begin to explain? I looked towards the taxi stand. I had money; the tips had been good.
Oh God, it’s his money
–
I don’t want it.
I searched the square for someone homeless I could give the cash to –
typical, no beggars when you need one.

I couldn’t risk a cab – what if it was that Magic bloke with his fat potato head and small curranty eyes?

I found my keys and manoeuvred them between my fingers; as usual the sharpest Yale gripped between my index and middle finger.
I could slash Flood’s face and stab his eyes
.

“You’re in a bit of a hurry, love.” A bloke in a Burberry T-shirt came at me from a crowded bench. “Come back with me if you like.” I looked away and kept walking. “Fit but you know it,” he shouted.

Fuck you.
I rushed on and soon left the busier streets behind as I headed for Forest Fields, gripping the keys even tighter as I walked uphill past the cemetery and the arboretum towards The Vine – murder territory. The slightest whistle of the wind in the trees or crackle of rats in the undergrowth made me jumpy. I could hear myself breathe. I had to laugh really; there I was, as always, afraid of the dark, my imagination working overtime; hooded rapists lurking round every corner, in driveways and behind bushes. Now the bogeyman had finally come for me and it had been nothing like that. Still, I kept looking behind, checking no light-footed attacker was creeping up close until at last I made it home to the blue paint-chipped door. I looked over my shoulder once more.
Don’t rapists lie in wait, ready to jump victims on their own doorsteps as they search for their keys?
At least I had my keys ready. I opened up and quickly closed it again, leaning my back against the door. I slid down to my backside and stared at a patch of orange glow seeping through the fanlight.

Upstairs, the lights in the kitchen were on. It was so late my housemates had to be asleep. I pushed the kitchen door open, taking in the stale smell of spilt lager and the remains of a wilting grey kebab. I filled a glass with tap water and made my way upstairs, my boots silenced by the shag pile.

I unlocked my door, closed it, turned the key from the inside, and went straight to the mirror. I looked pale, paler than usual, with hollowed out eyes, my dark hair straggly over my hunched shoulders. I hugged myself tight. I wanted to be small, wrap myself in cotton wool and post myself back home to Mum and Dad. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Everything was so simple for them – in their day you could pretty much fall into any job you fancied and with a little effort do well, have innocent dates, fall in love, marry and be safe
. Where did all this pressure to experience come from?
They’d cry their eyes out if they knew, their little girl alone in the world, probably violated. And worst of all, it was my fault. I should never have gone. What an idiot. All those years of Dad collecting me from anywhere and everywhere at any time, had I not learnt to be streetwise?

I turned off the light and went to the window, peeking out from behind the curtains, expecting to see somebody else’s little girl getting it wrong – keen to know I wasn’t the only one. There had been no one out there when I’d walked home but one girl was there now, talking into her mobile, skirt round her arse. Just the look of her scared me – she’d know too much – she’d be unbearably aware of the dark side of the world that I had only just had the misfortune to visit. She was pretty though, slim and anywhere between fifteen and thirty with shapely legs. Her braids made me think she might be mixed-race though it was hard to tell by streetlight. I wondered if she’d ever been attacked. At the very least she’d surely know someone who had. She’d know what to do. I could ask her. Only, it was ridiculous. I knew very well what I should do, but then I’d have to tell people how stupid I’d been. And really I couldn’t remember a thing so what was the point?

A large family estate pulled up alongside Girl-with-braids. She leant down to talk at the window, then slipped round to the passenger door and got in where his probable wife probably normally sat. And she was gone, the street empty. The Victorian terraces opposite were dark, the crossroads quiet. I was the only one still up, though of course that couldn’t be true. There had to be something going off somewhere in the city at that time whether it was just the last late-night pizza delivery, a little casual domestic violence after a night’s drinking, some territorial gun-crime, or a kerb-crawling man in a family estate looking for his next victim.

Five

Did someone knock on my door?
“Mia, you awake?” Kelly tried the handle. “You’ve locked it – you all right in there?”

I felt my head. It hurt – a dull, heavy ache.

“Mia, you in there?”

I stared in the direction of the door: “I’m awake.” My eyes felt gritty and I needed a drink of water.

“I’m going now,” Kelly said.

“Going where?”

“Where do you think? I’ll see you at college.”

It’s Friday?
I felt grubby and wanted to shower.
I can’t rush.
“I’ll see you down there.” I pushed back the duvet to re-examine my pale legs beneath my Santa-Cruz T-shirt. There was nothing there, not a single bruise.

My limbs were heavy, as I forced myself up and went to the bathroom where I took a compact from my wash bag and looked between my legs, momentarily fascinated by the mysterious fleshy shellfish folds.
Surely, if he’d done something it would show
. Physically there was nothing – I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t feel anything untoward.
I must be okay
. I was tired but then it had gone five by the time I finally got to bed. Sleep had been fitful with images of Flood over me doing something. At one point, I even sat bolt upright, convinced he was there in the room.
Stupid Girl
– that song kept going round my head. Garbage – that was it – that was the name of the band, it had come back to me; maybe other memories would filter through and I’d know what had or hadn’t happened and I’d know what to do.

“Who’s in there? Hurry up.” Slug hammered on the bathroom door.

“All right, calm down.” I pushed past him.

“You walking down?” Tamzin was in the kitchen looking like a young Elizabeth Hurley in white jeans and a tight pink T-shirt.

“I don’t believe it – where’s the milk I bought yesterday?” The fridge was empty apart from some sausages and a couple of eggs. And after all I’d said. While Slug’s box of Frosties and a used cereal bowl were on the table. “Bloody Slug, does he ever buy milk?”

“Come on, get dressed,” Tamzin said. “I’ll wait if you’re quick.”

We walked down to college in silence. Tamzin was never much good in the morning and I certainly didn’t want to talk. As we turned left into Shakespeare Street Tamzin dragged the last few puffs from her cigarette. “You must have got back late,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.” Tamzin’s room, originally the front reception room, was next to the hallway. “Did you stay for a drink after work?”

Why does she have to get talkative now?

“Have you got your eye on one of the chefs, is that it?” Tamzin stabbed out her fag before entering college. “You love Jason,” she said with a smirk. She only knew Jason’s name because I’d once mentioned how I thought he was quite funny. “Jason!” She grinned, and turned to go upstairs to Fashion.

I didn’t want her to go. I realised it then as streams of students crossed our path on their way to different departments. I wanted her to stay and drink endless cups of coffee with me somewhere. “Tamzin,” I said, making her turn around.

“Yeah?” She paused, and for a second I almost said something, but a dark wave of guilt silenced me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

She made a face like I was acting weird, and I turned away quickly, fearing I might cry. As I walked down the bright, white corridor leading to Fine Art I struggled to compose myself.

My desk was isolated by ten-foot high board partitions that designated my space within the whitewashed studio. My boards were covered in drawings, mainly sketches of friends, strangers and found objects, and there were magazine cuttings and other rough ideas. I’d been working relatively hard but now it all felt wrong. None of it was any longer applicable. I went at it in a frenzy reducing the pinned-up layers of sketches to nothing.
Fuck, shit, damn, piss, bastard
. I scrawled in my sketchbook filling several pages with obscenities before slamming it shut.

“Ah, Mia, what’s it all about?” My tutor Mike Manners pulled up a chair in my space, but didn’t sit down. “What have you got for me?”

It was time for my tutorial. Ten minutes earlier he’d have found a space full of rough workings and gathered sources of inspiration but now I’d dumped the lot.

“I’m moving on.” I glanced at the bin.

Mike Manners surveyed the stark white wooden boards of my enclosure. “Go on,” he said.

I swallowed hard, determined to hold it together. “I want to try a more conceptual approach, looking at communication – how it defines us. You know, how we’re perceived.” Hot, I wiped my forehead and coughed. “Sorry,” I said.

“Where’s this taking us?” Mike looked at the one pen and ink drawing I had accidentally left pinned to the wall. It was of a cat, hardly cutting-edge stuff – and he then peered at the postcard from my mate Ant. It was called ‘
The Perfect Woman
’ and consisted of a pair of tits and an arse on legs – no arms, no head. “The Perfect Woman,” he read aloud. “So she does exist. Where can I find her?” He thought he was being funny. “What about sketchbooks?” he asked.

My sketchbook was there on the desk in front of me. It was shut, but still it provided the only colour within my whitewashed space. I had tugged at the book’s black covering with a Stanley knife and rubbed coloured pastel into the greying underbelly and then daubed it with thick layers of red acrylic paint. And there, glued on top, was the Jenny Holzer cutting – ‘Protect Me From What I Want’. I passed it over. And then he did sit down, made himself really comfy, one leg up on the other, and his right foot on the left knee of his faded jeans that made him think he was still with it. Oh, and God no, he even had cowboy boots on – fucking cowboy boots – at his age.

Slowly, he leafed through the pages to show he was taking it all in because this was a tutorial; this was our one-on-one moment. Even if I hardly ever saw him from one end of term to the next, we did have this.

“Interesting,” he said, as he stroked his salt and pepper stubble. “You could use these words. I don’t mind that. I wouldn’t want everyone to do it, but yeah...” He thought he understood. But what had he seen? Surely, it was just ranting – the spewed anger of my confused, semi-amnesiac mind. Again I coughed and discreetly rubbed my watery eyes as he studied my work.

“There’s a recurring theme.” He nodded. “You need to look for a pattern. As I’ve said before, I don’t mind you using words. I wouldn’t want everyone to do it...” He stroked his chin, crossed and uncrossed his cowboy ankles. “I think it’s about representing one fundamental aspect of yourself, say angry young woman for instance. I’m not sure anyone can represent his or her whole self in one piece, not straight off, first attempt. Artists spend a lifetime working on such projects. Okay, Mia. Let’s go for a big push.” He pumped his right fist. The tutorial was over. For all his concern, he stuck steadfastly to the allocated ten minutes before strutting off for coffee.

Again I wiped my eyes as I packed away my sketchbook and slung my bag over my shoulder.
I’m out of here
. It was a relief to exit the studio until I realised I’d have to pass the gallery showing Flood’s work. A bubble of panic burst within me and I let out an involuntary gasp.

I’d forgotten about it on the way in as I’d been talking to Tamzin and the foyer had been full of people who must have obscured it.
Now, it’s just me and over to the left, the brilliant white cube that designates the gallery space.

What if Flood is here?
I could see the show’s title piece,
Now That You’ve Gone Were You Ever There?
The pearl stud earring on a black velvet cushion raised high on a plinth surrounded by the outline of a body with prominent breasts had become more sinister.
Where did that earring come from?
When I first saw it I had assumed it belonged to an ex-girlfriend, but now I had my doubts.
Did he do something to her?
And the yellow taped outline on the floor – is that woman dead?