Stockholm Syndrome 2- 17 Black and 29 Red (4 page)

"Where are you going?"

 

"Toilet, do you need any more details?"

"No thanks." She rolls gracelessly off the sofa and finds his glass lying on its side on the carpet, standing it upright on the coffee table so she can carefully pour the last inch of wine out of the bottle. "Get another bottle on your way back, I don't feel drunk enough."
Drunk enough for what?
he wants to ask, but he's scared of what the answer might be.

She's crying again when he comes back in the room, but when he sits next to her and tries to find out what's wrong, when he pulls her hands away from her face, she starts laughing as well. "Maybe I
am
a bit drunk," she manages to say.

"A bit?" She settles against him, under his arm, and lets him wipe her cheeks dry with his shirt cuff. "I think the technical term is 'wankered'."

 

"You'd know."

 

"Trust me, I've got an English degree."

 

"Like every other job-dodger in the country."

 

"Like you?"

 

"I could work. I just choose to sit in my mansion and get
wankered
every day."

 

"It's a nice choice to have."

"Indeed." She's holding his hand now, winding their fingers together and looking at the shapes they make, but Lindsay thinks he was the one who started it without realising. There's one very specific memory he's never been able to forget, even though so many of the others got hidden in a fog of drugs and hangovers - that night dancing in an airfield where colours were impossibly brighter and scents were sharper and Ellie held his wrist and sucked a pill off the end of his finger and Ty got jealous and punched him in the face but he was so out of it even the pain felt like magic.

"I have to go," he says, but he doesn't move.

 

"Go on, then."

 

"Really. I should go."

 

"You're right, you should." Her hand is slack in his, she's not holding on any more. It's like she waiting for him to let go but he still hasn't.

 

"I mean it. I'm going."

 

"Get out of my house."

 

"Ah... shit. I can't. I'm drunk. I can't drive."

 

"So stay."

 

"Alright."

 

"But I won't be your rebound."

 

"I was yours."

"That wasn't a rebound, that was just a hug that didn't know when to stop." She dissolves into those out-of-place giggles again, and then she's back to crying too hard to breathe. Lindsay doesn't know what to do so he doesn't do anything. That worked for them when it was the other way around. He just strokes her hair gently until she's calmer. "I'm really drunk," she says, muffled because she's wiping her wet nose on her hand. "I'm going to bed."

"Me too."

 

"Not with me you're not."

 

"As if I want to sleep with Supermum anyway. It's like waving a pencil in a cave."

"You're disgusting. Go to hell." But she kisses him goodnight just like she always did and for a second it's like nothing's changed, like Ty and Danny could be in the next room or outside for a smoke.

***

Morning is horrific, a hangover that feels like his head's being crushed in a vice. Ellie can't be feeling much better, going by the way she looks when Lindsay manages to drag himself into the kitchen and pour a cup of tarry black coffee. She only lifts her head from the table long enough to give him a wan good-morning smile.

"Coffee?" he says, and she groans and carefully puts her head back on the tabletop.

 

"I'll be sick."

 

"Water?"

 

"I'll be sick."

 

"You might feel better if you're sick."

 

"Ugh."

He talks her into a glass of water, then a cup of coffee, and then she looks and he feels more or less human. She even lets him open the window and have a smoke without going outside, because the girls aren't here.

"So what are you going to do?" Lindsay says, stubbing the cigarette end out on the brickwork outside the window then dropping it into his empty cup. The wooden box of ashes is still on the kitchen table where they left it last night. He doesn't want to look at it, it seems offensively small and plain for what it is, what it's holding.

"I don't know. Maybe nothing. Maybe I'll just put it in the bin. He wouldn't like people being all sentimental about it, you know what he was like about funerals."

"I'll take it, if you want."

 

She doesn't even look surprised. "What would you do?"

 

"No idea. Keep it safe until you decide, if you don't want it in the house."

 

"If you take it, you can do what you like with it."

 

"Yeah?"

"It'd be one less job, to be honest." She pours more coffee but doesn't drink it, just spends too long stirring milk and sugar in before she speaks again as if she's putting off the moment she has to say the words. "Do you remember my old friend Ann? Annabel Spenser?"
"Your bridesmaid? She copped off with Danny at your wedding."

"So he said. She swore blind it never happened."

 

"What about her?"

 

"She married a Canadian. They live in Quebec. Would you come and visit us if we lived in Quebec?"

 

"...Jesus. Are you serious?"

"The girls don't want to stay here any more. Well, Alice is too young and Katie just says what Melissa says, but Melissa's all for getting the hell out of here. I
know
people are going to forget if we give it enough time but I'm not keeping them locked up in here any more. They can't even go to school now because the other girls give them such a hard time, you know how much they loved their school."

"I know."

 

"I think it'd be good. Get away and start over where nobody knows or cares who we are."

 

"It's an awful long way."

 

"But it's not as if we can't both afford the flights for visits, right?"

 

"Right."

 

"You could come with us," she says quietly, still not really looking at him. "I feel... I don't know. I don't want you to be on your own."

"I've just spent years sharing my house with a man who splashes hair dye all up the bathroom walls and thinks a sugar sandwich is an acceptable meal. I
love
being on my own." He doesn't know why he's lying. He can't stand it. The house is so quiet. He left everything as it was for almost a week before he got used to the fact that this
wasn't
just the kid having an elaborate tantrum, and then he spent a couple of days slowly packing all his things away in case he ever got in touch and wanted it back. Valentine's bedroom became a junk room, full of stacked cardboard boxes and paint-stained dustsheets, and when Lindsay was finished he shut the door on it and tried to forget the room was there at all. The only thing he left out was the monkey, and even that ended up abandoned on top of his wardrobe because he couldn't stand seeing it. And Lovecat. The stupid little furball jumped on him when Valentine drove away, as if it knew he needed company, and wouldn't leave him alone. The empty house got unbearable very quickly and he had to get out, but giving the cat to Aurelie to keep permanently was so hard he spent a week dithering and living out of his packed suitcases before he could actually do it.

Ellie's clearly not fooled, but she doesn't push it. "Alright. So what are you going to do? Are you going to work?" There's the tiniest hesitation before 'work', he knows what she means.

"No."

 

"You could do something else. You're smart, you're good at business, you could start something up again like your old company."

"No." He feels sick and restless. He gets up out of his chair again and goes over to the window, but he doesn't light another cigarette, just fiddles with the packet because it's something to do. "I don't know. I might just
go
. Travel places. I've never been to New Zealand. I've never been to Iceland or Peru or Japan."

"Japan's near Canada."

 

"I'll pop round for a coffee, shall I?"

"Please do." He hears the scrape of her chair legs on the floor, then she's there behind him slipping her arms around his waist. He puts his cigarettes down and turns round to hug her properly and they don't speak for a long time, until she clears her throat and says very quietly, "I might miss you quite a lot."

"I'll visit. I promise. I'll send hilarious comedy postcards." "Everything's fucked."

 

"It'll get better."

 

"You think so?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Do you still miss your dad?"

 

"Every day, but not all the time. It'll get better."

 

"I can't believe I'm this old and I've never really known anybody who's died before."

 

"You're not old."

 

"I feel old. I feel like the fucking cryptkeeper."

 

"But you still like Veronica Lake so shut up."

"God, I knew I should've married you instead." She's laughing a bit and he lets her go, finally lighting up that cigarette as she starts making more coffee.

"Do you remember Fantazia?"

 

She looks up, as if she's surprised by the sudden memory. "Which one?"

 

"All of them. July at Donington."

 

"I think I was a bit out of it."

 

"You were beautiful. Ty said that's the night he knew he was going to marry you or die trying."

 

"That's a bit soppy for him, isn't it?"

 

"Well, he was a bit out of it too."

 

"Match made in heaven."

 

"Something like that."

They fall silent, comfortable and thoughtful. Lindsay has his smoke and Ellie drinks her coffee and the wooden box of ashes stays there on the table, impossible to ignore as if it's lit up in neon.

5.

The strangest thing about being back in London is the way he's treated by people who used to be his friends. It's his own fault really, Pip thinks; he never put that much effort into keeping in touch either, but then maybe it was their fault after all because they all started being weird with him years ago after the Lottery thing. People off the estate who'd spent years picking on him were suddenly asking him out, inviting him to parties, propositioning him. Trying to get knocked up so they can claim millions in support, Olly had said sagely, and Pip just laughed at how fucking stupid they were, as if he'd forget all those years of angry spitting swears and taunting jibes and bruises and fall into bed with the first slapper who tried it on. The girls were always the worst. They knew he was a queer, they'd spent all that time forcefully reminding him with their fists and fingernails and nasty words, so why would he get amnesia now? He couldn't get out of there quickly enough. His
real
friends, the people he and Olly were in the band with, Ricky and Jono and Kelli and Tom, they were less weird about it but it was always
there
all the same, hanging over their heads like a thundercloud. Meeting Lindsay was like escaping. Right or wrong, it was a way out of that vague sense of awkwardness he suddenly had around everybody and couldn't shake off. Coming back into it all now, he feels fifteen and embarrassed again, as if a surprise twenty-one million in the bank was something shameful. Two million of it was his right away when his dad transferred it over to his account in a fit of jubilant glee he probably regretted when the adrenaline faded away. They went wild on it for a bit, he funded trips out to Alton Towers and loads of new clothes for everyone and a group adventure holiday in Cornwall doing shrieking bungee jumps and the most expensive bottles of champagne they could buy on their fake IDs, just because he could, but it felt stale right from the start.

"They're still being funny with me too," Olly says, as they're walking into the bar. He holds the door open and Pip ducks under his arm to get inside, feeling a bit like a girl with a hilariously chivalrous boyfriend. "Since you bought me that house," he goes on, having to speak up over the music and voices. "Like they think I'm well above myself now just cos I'm living somewhere nice. I know it's just cos they're jealous, I know I'm dead lucky and everything, but y'know... I wouldn't've got somewhere
this
nice on my own but I was always gonna get
something
. They just sit round all day waiting for good things to happen like the world owes them a favour, they ain't even trying." Olly goes behind the bar and kisses the girl there hello, then gets on making Pip a double Malibu and Coke without even being asked. He puts a neon pink umbrella in it too, and a green twirly helter-skelter straw, smirking when he hands it over. "Kitsch night, innit?"

"In my world
every
night's kitsch night."

 

"Yeah, but just wait til you see these twatty cocktails."

There aren't any seats by the bar, Pip just stands there a bit selfconsciously, waiting for the place to fill up a bit. "Do you miss them? Everyone."

"I got four little Starlings, mate, I ain't got time for nothing else. Anyway, I still got you, ain't I? You're worth all of them put together." Pip feels a thrilling rush of pleasure at that - it's not that he
forgets
they're best friends but he still likes
hearing
it - until Olly adds, "Well, I say 'worth', I mean you're more trouble innit," and then he's laughing. Olly grins, making himself a drink of plain Coke because he's working, and clinks it off Pip's already half-empty glass. "To the baby, yeah? What's it, fucking... Doris?"

"No she ain't
Doris
, it's
Dorian
!"

 

"That's just as bad, your mum and dad's both fucking tapped."

 

"Well, we known that for years, ain't we?"

Pretty soon it gets too noisy and busy to chat. Olly's showing off and spinning glasses and bottles around so Pip turns to push through the crowd to get to the dancefloor. He can hear Olly's voice behind him yelling, "No going home with dirty old men who only break your heart!" and he can't help laughing.
Alright
, he says, but so quietly he can't even hear it himself. It's an easy enough instruction to follow - the place is teeming with kids, younger than him. He probably couldn't find a dirty old man if he tried. He
is
the dirty old man, he realises with amusement a bit later, throwing himself round the dancefloor to Don't Stop Moving by S Club 7 and eyeing up a blond boy who seems oblivious to everything else, singing his head off and cackling with laughter every time he accidentally bumps into someone. He smiles happily when he catches Pip's eye, breathless and sweaty from dancing, then cheers and punches the air when Waterloo comes on, launching himself back into his clump of friends.