The Fall
Copyright © 2012 Claire McGowan
The right of Claire McGowan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 9780755386352
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For my parents,
who gave the books, told the stories, and held us all together.
Monday
This is it
. Her head was strangely clear despite the blood filling up her nose and mouth. An inch from her eye, the floor of the toilet was that kind of speckled plastic you got in public buildings, the dots like islands marooned in a sea of blue. Funny how she’d never looked at it properly before. But yes, that was it – little islands, on a vast blue sea, and every one filled with small people, somewhere a million miles from here. She heard distant sounds, like someone talking far, far away, a voice on a crossed phone line. It was a whimpering, like an animal in pain. It was coming from somewhere inside her.
This is it
. She was bleeding from her mouth and she couldn’t get up; something had happened to her legs – they’d given way or they wouldn’t work or . . . something. Maybe she would lie here for ever. Maybe if she just stayed here and closed her eyes she could go back and none of it would have happened.
This is it
. Through the roaring in her ears, she had the thought very clearly, as if looking down on herself crumpled up on the floor. This was what it felt like when you hit rock bottom, when you’d lost everything that mattered. Rock bottom, and it smelled of bleach and tasted like the sour, metallic tang of blood.
Three days earlier – Friday
The social-worker woman was really fucking Keisha off. It was the way she sat there, dull as shit in this awful cardie from BHS or somewhere, and the short grey hair and the glasses on a string, like a granny, for fuck’s sake. But mostly it was the way she talked, all soft and gentle, like she’d been on a course to deal with fucking retards.
Keisha slumped down in the plastic seat, squeaking her Dunlop trainers over the floor, and her mum gave her a look. Of course
she
was nodding along with every word Sandra said, like it was the Lord’s own gospel. Yes, Keisha, you
are
too unstable to have your own bloody kid living with you, even though you’ve got a flat and a job and a man. What fucking more did they want?
‘But I don’t get it, right?’ She folded her arms in her new denim jacket – one of
his
presents, trying to make up for yet another crappy thing he’d done. ‘I did what you said, yeah? I got her room sorted, and her bed, wardrobe, all that shit. In bloody pink ruffles.’
Keisha’s mum glared at her. ‘Language,’ she muttered, her thick voice pure Kingston even after thirty years in England. ‘Manners of a field hand.’
Sandra was staring between them probably thinking she couldn’t get enough of all this juicy
unresolved conflict
, as she would call it. If she loved it so fucking much, she should go and work on
Trisha
or something.
‘The thing is, Keisha,’ Sandra said, setting her pen down carefully. ‘The thing is, we’re still a bit concerned about the relationship you’re in.’
‘He’s her fucking dad!’
‘Don’t you be effin’ and blindin’ before the lady!’ her mother bellowed. If Keisha had been just a few years younger, Mercy would have belted her round the ear.
‘That’s OK, Mercy,’ said Sandra earnestly. ‘I understand it must be hard for Keisha, when Christopher is, as she says, Ruby’s father. But after what happened, you must see he needs to change. He’s never even come to meet with me, in all this time.’
‘He’s busy.’ She’d begged him to come, much fucking use it was. Sat at home in his pants and Arsenal top, playing on the Xbox –
me time
, he called it. While she had to trudge up to this depressing shithole, smelled just like her old school, same echoing corridors, and Sandra talking at her in that
you-are-a-loony
voice.
Her mum was nodding along again, meaty arms folded over her vast boobs. ‘Good for nothin’, that boy. Only good thing he ever do’s make that baby.’
Keisha slumped further. It wasn’t fair, these two spinster bitches telling her to leave the man she loved –
her
man. When everyone knew how lucky she was to even be allowed to breathe near Chris Dean. They didn’t understand a thing.
‘OK, Keisha,’ Sandra said, blinking rapidly. ‘We’ll see if Christopher will come next time. Until then my hands are tied, I’m afraid. He has to show he won’t let it happen again, what he did.’
‘He won’t.’ He’d promised her, when she screamed in his face. She’d even slapped him – now, months later, she wasn’t sure how she’d been able to do that, or why he hadn’t slapped her back harder.
‘I’ll let you out.’ Sandra got up, huffing. She wasn’t as fat as Mercy, but she still had rolls of flab jiggling under her chin. Gross.
In the crappy waiting room, all dirty windows and bent plastic seats, Ruby was playing. She had a colouring book and a tatty old Barbie doll Mercy’d bought her in the pound shop. It wasn’t even a real Barbie, just a white plastic doll with blonde hair. Didn’t look much like Ruby, with her kinky hair tied up in bunches. The kid’s big dark eyes were nervous behind her glasses. The cast was off now, thank God. Keisha had hardly been able to look at the thing. She hovered in the doorway, looking at her daughter.
Sandra obviously thought she was good with kids; probably she’d been on a course for that too. She stuck her fat face down to Ruby’s. ‘Hello, precious. Is that your dolly? Isn’t she pretty?’ Ruby ducked her head, and you could see her going in on herself. She was shy, and who could blame her after what her own dad did to her? Ruby looked from the social worker to Keisha. Then she shuffled close to Mercy, clutching hold of her cheap dolly, hiding in against her granny’s fat body.
‘Well, you’re a shy one.’ Sandra laughed but Keisha could see she was hurt. She understood how that was – it’d taken her a while not to expect Ruby to come over and hug her like she used to. She stuck her hands under her arms so she wouldn’t try to hold the kid.
‘Come on, my sweetypie, home time.’ Keisha’s mum folded her granddaughter into her chest, and it was right, Keisha had to admit. You would see the two of them, and even though they were both light-skinned enough, you’d say, oh yeah, black granny, black grandkid. It looked right. That was the problem. That was when everything had started to go wrong.
‘We’ll get sweets, eh? Fruit Pastilles, ice lolly?’ Puffing, Mercy let the girl slide down. Ruby’s face puckered, thinking about what sweets to have, no doubt, and for a moment Keisha wished it was her going home with her mum, the safeness of it, eating sweets in front of Friday cartoons. Or even that she was the one buying, saying to Ruby,
You have to brush your teeth after
.
She wanted to say something to Ruby. It was the first time she’d seen her in weeks; Chris didn’t like her going to visit. She wanted to say something, but what was there? Nothing. Fuck all. She waited till Mercy and her granddaughter had wobbled far enough down the corridor, and then set off fast in the opposite direction.
‘So, Charlotte – keeping busy? Not long now, eh?’
Charlotte was by now an expert at minimising one computer window while beaming a large smile at her boss and calling up a document on the branding of a new rice-cake snack. ‘A week tomorrow.’
‘So we shouldn’t count on seeing you down the boozer after work?’ He leaned over the partition, so close she was breathing his aftershave.
She managed to look regretful. ‘Oh, sorry, no. We just have so much to do – you know how it is.’
He waved his empty coffee cup. ‘How about I make you a cup of the hard stuff, at least, before you abandon us?’
‘I’ll do it, Simon, you must be swamped,’ she said, as she knew he expected.
Filling the kettle at the tiny sink area, Charlotte sneaked a look at the clock. 4.06 p.m. She would be out of here soon, for an increasingly rare free weekend with Dan. It was a lie that they had plans. For the past month Dan had crashed into bed at nine, worn out from fourteen-hour days, and she’d sat up poring over wedding magazines and stationery designs. It felt like they’d been passing in the corridor for so long. But not tonight. It was going to be a proper romantic evening in, talking, being together. She’d make sure of it.
As she brought him his coffee, Simon was standing over the new girl – what was her name again? Tory, that was it – his crotch pressed into the back of her ergonomic chair as he pointed to something on the screen. Charlotte remembered it – she remembered that part of Simon a bit better than she wished.
‘Coffee,’ she said brightly, passing him the mug he always had to have, the one with the crest of his Oxford college on it, to remind everyone he was an intellectual, even if he wrote copy for cereal ads.
‘Oh, Tory,’ she said. ‘I wanted a quick chat with you, about the Snax rebrand?’ Like every woman in the office, all Charlotte’s statements were questions, rising up at the end. It showed friendliness, a willingness to be contradicted. She didn’t notice she did it any more.
Simon withdrew. ‘You’ve got it now, Tory. I’ll leave you ladies to it.’ He strutted off in his Prada cardigan, drips of coffee catching in his beard.
Tory looked worried. ‘God, it’s a bit dodge, isn’t it? His you-know-what was, like, millimetres from my armpit.’
Charlotte pushed back her curly hair, the colour of very good old gold, and imparted some wisdom. ‘It’s mostly harmless. But listen, if he asks you for a drink, make sure there’s other people there too. Like, seriously.’
The other girl laughed uncertainly and Charlotte felt pleased with herself, how she knew her way round this office, how she could handle Simon like a little lamb, after hard-learned lessons. She’d done it now, and she wouldn’t have to go back and be like this Tory, clueless. ‘It’ll be OK. Don’t worry.’