Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (18 page)

 

"It's just family, who are we trying to impress? I like it when you call me that."

"I know." Lindsay exhales, nothing as dramatic as a sigh, just a little quiet breath that tickles the side of Pip's face. His hand is resting on Pip's chest now, and he starts inching it down to touch the button at the top of his jeans. "Is this what you want?"

"It's always what I want."
"Can you be quiet?"
"Not sure."

"Put your thumb back in." He shifts the arm around Pip's body, moving up around the front of his shoulders, and presses his palm gently against the red denim between his legs. "Can you be quick?"

"Yeah," he says, slurring around his thumb. He can feel himself getting instantly harder, the pressure of Lindsay's hand and the way he's learning to look him in the eye. His zip sounds like a chainsaw in the thick silence when Lindsay draws it down, and he braces his feet against the chair to lift up and push his jeans and pants down just enough so Lindsay can start stroking him gently with his spit-wet hand.

"Quiet," Lindsay murmurs against Pip's hot face. "I don't need my mum hearing you get off."

 

"Or mine. Or my
dad
."

 

"Look how hard you're getting. Vile little exhibitionist, you love this."

 

"I love
you
."

"Thumb," Lindsay orders, and Pip puts it back between his teeth and tries not to make any more sounds, tries not to think about all the parents and the little sister playing card games down the hall. Tries to wish the whole world away, especially Canada.

13.

It's probably not going to be too bad after all. He can pass rudeness off as being a fussy chef and not wanting anybody getting under his feet in the kitchen while he's preparing dinner. He can hear shrieks and thuds upstairs in the living room and Valentine laughing, obviously determined to give his sister a good go on the BMX they bought for her whether it's pissing down rain outside or not. Lindsay tries not to think about chipped antique furniture and sticky drinks spilled on expensive cream rugs and pops open a bottle of wine. It's the only way to get through.

He thinks it might be Valentine when he hears footsteps on the stairs a while later, and he's half-right. It's
a
Valentine, it's not his. He's still getting used to being the second most important person in Valentine's life now he's got a little sister. It's strange. He tries not to let it get to him as much as it does.

"Beverley," he says when she comes into the kitchen. It sounds stupid and formal and he downs his glass of wine. "Can I get you a glass of-" Oh shit. "Anything?" he finishes weakly. If she noticed the stumble, and she must have done, she's too polite to let it show.

"Just water. Show me where you keep the glasses, I'll do it."

"Up there. Water in the fridge, there should be ice left in the freezer." He wants more wine and feels awkward about doing it when she's there. It's no different to Valentine smoking all that weed in front of him, or getting delirious on pills a couple of the times he talked Lindsay into coming out with him; it's a constant itch, one he can't quite reach to scratch. Things are different now, he cares enough not to let it get too much again – but that's what he thought last time, and the time before. Self-control always seems such an easy concept when it's not being tested, but the step from getting off your face in a packed club and feeling the bass and chemicals thump through your veins with your blood to that pointless state of slow suicide was such a tiny one.

Maybe she'll go and he can finish the bottle in peace, he hopes, but he can feel her watching him, and then he hears the scrape of chair legs on the floor as she sits down.

"Your house is beautiful."
"Thank you."
"How long have you lived here?"

"Permanently since July but I used to own a business with branches in London, I stayed here when I was needed in town." "I grew up in Herne Hill. Weird being back."

"I know. Philip gave me the tour. 'This is Grandad's house, there's Grandad's church, this is where Grandad taught me to ride my trike, I fell over on this road one time and Grandad piggybacked me home and he ran dead fast and it felt like flying, that's his gravestone...'"

"He's got him on a pedestal the size of Nelson's Column." "I noticed."

"Same with you, though." Lindsay's not sure what to say to that so he stays quiet and just keeps on peeling potatoes in the sink. "He talks about you all the time, whenever he comes round."

"...Oh," he manages, desperately wishing she'd just go away. He pours another glass of wine. She'll just have to put up with it. "Can I help you with anything?"

"No, it's fine, there's not much else left to do." But she comes over anyway, leaning there against the counter with her sweating glass of ice water and not really looking at him.

"Why don't you ever come with him when he visits?" It's obvious, surely. "I don't think Philip's dad and I see eye to eye on very many things."

 

"You're marrying my son. I want to know who you are."

"Oh Jesus," he mutters to his potato skins, sounding disgusted but not nearly as bad as he always
feels
every time this tripe is dragged up. "What's he told you?"

"Well, just a lot of wishful thinking, apparently." Now she's looking at him, he can sense it without even glancing up. "It doesn't change anything, I still wish I knew you."

"Why?"

"Why not? That's the point of a family." She goes silent for a while, just watching him work, then says quietly, "He must have told you everything."

"Yes."

 

"So you know there's a lot of lost time to make up for."

There's a stupid short fuse somewhere in him that loathes this kind of heart-to-heart and always does its best to ruin things when it gets too uncomfortable. "The reason he's round your house so much is that he's scared to death your husband is going to belt Dory until she bleeds or break her jaw, and you'll let it happen and when she comes to you for comfort you'll just open another can and tell her oh darling that's just too bad but if you learned not to backchat then you wouldn't get hit for it."

"He's never touched her. You shouldn't take Pip's word as truth anyway. If he lies to me about you asking him to marry you then why wouldn't he exaggerate things from before?"

"He's not that good an actor. You should have seen him when-" Lindsay stops himself short, making sure the ancient lie is fixed properly in place like a brick wall in his head. "After he was kidnapped, when he came home and then couldn't stand it and left again. It's a six-hour drive from London and he was
still
shaking when he got to mine. You don't get that angry unless you're scared to death." But this is a dangerous memory to revisit: Valentine's shining eyes and sulky mouth and petulant attitude, how long and straight his hair was and how darkly he'd drawn the black onto his eyes, how he pushed and pushed until Lindsay snapped and held Valentine over his knee like a bratty disobedient child just to shock him into stopping. Fucking hypocrite. That's the worst thing, how he
knows
Valentine gets under your skin and flicks all the switches. Valentine said it himself later that night, when they'd both calmed down a bit,
I must have 'hit me' on my face because everybody wants to
.

"Can't people change?"

 

"Phil punched him in the face
this Halloween
. Nearly knocked some teeth out."

"Yes, but since neither of you bothered to ask what happened after you left, let me tell you how I shut him out the house all night, I had the locks changed in the morning, I started getting advice about divorce and custody, and the only reason it never happened is because he's getting this anger management counselling thing."

He almost laughs at that. It sounds like such pretentious American bullshit,
counselling
. "And that's going to erase the past, is it? You being too drunk to care that your husband was battering your kid?"

"No, but you tell me what else I can do. Go on."
"Why do I
always
end up in fights with your family?" "Because you're a judgemental, arrogant, hypocritical prick."

Bizarrely, of all the possible openers in the world, that's when they begin to be friends.

"Do you mind?" Lindsay says, nodding at his wine bottle. Beverley shakes her head no and watches him pour. As soon as all the food's cooking they both sit at the kitchen table, and things feel less strained now they've crashed through whatever barrier was there and come out onto the other side where things are calmer, like a storm that's washed the sky clean and blue.

"It's nobody else's problem, it's mine. Can't expect anyone else not to drink. He shouldn't have told me about your drugs thing." "Probably not."

"I think he was trying to be helpful. Sort of, common ground. Or something. Because your mother and your boyfriend bonding over their addictions is a
great
idea."

He resists the urge to crack his head off the table at the dreaded b-word. "Why did you start?"

"Don't know. I was young. Kids drink too much. Then my mum died when I was twenty and it just got worse. We were stuck in that revolting flat block because Phil was too stubborn to let my dad help us with money, he just worked all the time instead. Everybody drank in there, and worse. What about you?"

"Rich. Young. Stupid. Everybody was doing it. You know, '90s rave scene..." He can feel himself pulling a face at the memories. It feels a million years away and it's all so embarrassing, that dreadful music and the ridiculous clothes everybody wore, how depressingly young they all look in the photos. "And it felt good. It doesn't always have to be about escaping, sometimes you're just after a good time and you're too into it to know when to stop, then suddenly you've got a habit worth more than what most people earn in a year."

"Do you miss it?"
"Sometimes. Do you?"

"Yes, but I don't miss how it made me act. You get so... I don't know, when you stop drinking. All those people making idiots of themselves, falling off their heels and rolling in the gutter and sicking up in their own hair, it's disgusting."

"You're not meant to feel pious, you're supposed to want to help people. So I've been told."

 

"Too selfish," she says, with a faint smile that's so much like Valentine's Lindsay can't help returning it.

 

"Me too."

She doesn't seem old enough to have a kid who's almost twentyseven. Lindsay's seen old photos, the papers through those horrible few days when Valentine went home to his parents and the snapshots he's claimed from them and put up in little picture frames all over the house, and it's like somebody else. She looks her age but slim and fresh and pretty now in no make-up and a dark blonde ponytail, wearing jeans and a handknit boyish cardigan she just unwrapped from Valentine earlier. She's only a year or so older than Lindsay, and he feels a sort of abstract terror every time he accidentally remembers.

"Is it weird having such a massive age gap between Philip and Dory?"

"It was. Not any more. I mean, some of the girls I knew when I was sixteen were having babies at the same time as me, so that wasn't strange, and a lot of the friends I've got now are just having their first babies in their thirties and forties, so that's not strange either. I got paranoid people might think we were trying to replace him, that bit was weird."

"Does he think that?" "Don't know. I think he used to. He's mad about her, you know he is."

"Did he tell you I thought she was his?" "People always think that. Don't you ever want kids?"

"Christ, no. No thank you. No." She's giving him that faint smile again, raising her eyebrows in a question, so he fumbles on. "I never did. I had the op when I was twenty-one, graduation present to myself. I always knew."

"You could adopt."
"That's even worse. Somebody
else's
child invading your life." "Pip told me you've got stepchildren."

There's not enough wine in the world to be having this conversation. "Not really. My best friends' kids. Like Olly's for him."

"Are you two getting along yet?"
"Not really."
"Are you jealous?"
"Why are you interrogating me?" "Just trying to get to know you."

"I'm not jealous," he lies through his gritted teeth, probably not very convincingly. "We've just got nothing in common, we're never going to be friends."

"Alright."
"Have they always been so close?"

"Since they were tiny, completely inseparable. We started going on joint family holidays because they kicked off so much about being forced to spend two weeks away from each other. Sohini... Olly's mum... she was really good to me, I know she's still not really forgiven me for being such a mess but she was always so good to me, and to Pip.
For
Pip. She was more his mother than I ever was."

"I'm sure that's not true."
"Are you?"

"Well..." He wonders where his own mother is. Her talent for walking into conversations only seems to manifest itself when she's not wanted, never when she is. "Everyone messes up somewhere, right?"

"Even you?" she says with a taunting gleam in her eye just like the one that's always there in Valentine's.

 

"Of course not, I'm flawless."

"So Pip keeps telling me." She gets up to fetch more water; when she sits down again, she's giving him a strange, thoughtful sort of look. "You met in Edinburgh, right?"

The lie is familiar and faultless – it should be, they practised it enough. "He was there for some gig, I was working. Same hotel." "Eyes meeting across a crowded dining room."

 

"Not quite. He rolled in drunk one night and threw up on my feet in the lift."

"He told me. He bought you some new shoes and lurked round the lobby for hours waiting for you, he didn't know your name or room number."

"Nice shoes. He looks like a tranny but he's alright at picking for other people. Right size, too."

 

"Did you...? And him."

 

"No," he says firmly. "Don't ask me questions about your son's sex life."

"Just nosy. Do you always go for younger men?" "I'm not answering that." "That's a yes, then." "That's a keep your nose out of my bedroom."