Still Falling Read online

  ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll get it. Why didn’t you just go to bed? You could have phoned me. We could have gone out another time.’

  ‘But it’s your birthday today. I just – I wasn’t going to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, Luke.’ She takes my hands. ‘I think I’d have noticed.’ Her eyes aren’t just sparkly, they’ve got make-up on, something silvery and glittery, and they’re huge and beautiful.

  I pull my hands away and rub them over my face. I turn on the taps, rinse out my mouth with cold water. I can’t trust myself to speak without screaming or something.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just one of those things. Come and rest in my bedroom. I’ll get you some more painkillers. Do you want me to phone Sandra?’

  ‘They’re out.’

  Let me stay with you. It’s more a feeling than a thought. I move closer to her, push my head into her soft hair, breathe in her perfumey clean smell.

  She rubs the back of my head. ‘Come on.’ She takes my hand and leads me back down the beige hall and opens a door. Her bedroom. I have an impression of white paint and fairy lights and books but the only thing I’m really focussing on is the bed. White cover, looks so soft, loads of cushions. I could bury my head in one of those cushions for ever.

  ‘Get into bed properly,’ she says, pulling back the duvet. ‘You’re freezing. I’ll go and put the heating on. I won’t be long.’

  Lying down in Esther’s bed feels wonderful. It smells clean and laundryish but there’s a faint scent of Esther herself, the smell I remember from the first time, from her cardigan. Her duvet is warm and light round me. On a shelf beside the bed I see the card I made her. I wonder if she liked it. I wonder if she remembered the joke. I press my head into her pillow.

  ‘Luke? Are you asleep?’

  ‘Huh?’ I drag myself back to consciousness and struggle to sit up. She stands above me, her dark hair falling round her shoulders. She hands me two tablets and a glass of water. The room’s warmer now, and my trousers are steaming on the radiator under the window.

  ‘You look cosy.’ She sits down beside me, and it’s only a single bed so I scrudge up and we’re really close, only she’s outside the duvet and I’m inside. She puts her arm round me and I lean against her, and she presses her lips against my forehead, and I want to say that we’ll go out tomorrow instead but I don’t think I get the words out before I fall into sleep.

  Esther

  Happy birthday, Esther.

  But the funny thing is I am weirdly happy. Going out for dinner would have been lovely. And I wish for Luke’s sake it hadn’t been spoilt, because I can see how angry and embarrassed he is. Or was; he’s asleep now, his lips slightly parted, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks, his hair a blond tousle against my dress, one arm thrust out across me. I reach down and kiss his hair – so soft, tasting of shampoo – and he doesn’t wake. I don’t want him to wake. Being here, like this, with Luke’s body a slightly uncomfortable but welcome weight against mine is more special than being in a restaurant with ordinary strangers and waiters and music and food. This is just me and Luke, closer than we’ve ever been.

  If he wakes up the spell will be broken.

  I’ve imagined Luke in my bed. Though not like this. The sound of his breathing shifts a little, and his weight against me increases, as the enchantment deepens. I catch sight of the carrier bag Luke had with him, which I brought in with the painkillers. I know my present is in there, and I won’t open it until Luke’s awake, though I can’t help wondering what it is. I peek in the bag and see that my present isn’t the thing that made it heavy. My present must be that neat book-shaped parcel. A book. Well, of course I’m the kind of girl you buy a book for. I feel slight panic. I can’t help feeling that whatever he’s chosen will be some big statement of how he really feels about me.

  But I don’t need a statement. He dragged himself here, clearly feeling terrible, just so he wouldn’t let me down.

  Anyway, whatever the book is, it’s small and light: what made the bag heavy was the bottle of red wine.

  I’ve never really drunk. There’s never any alcohol in this house, and it’s not like I get invited to parties. But the bottle has a dark, promising glow. And it’s my seventeenth birthday and my boyfriend is out cold in my bed and the house is so quiet with only his breathing and, if I listen closely, mine. I pick up Luke’s empty water glass, and turn to the wine. I move really cautiously so I don’t disturb Luke but he’s totally out of it. One of the kids at summer scheme used to sleep for hours after a seizure. Another one used to bounce back like nothing had happened.

  Lucky it’s a screw top. You wouldn’t find a corkscrew in 45 Palgrave Crescent. It splashes into the glass, darker than I expect, not really red but purplish like Ribena. It doesn’t taste like Ribena. The first mouthful is bitter and makes my teeth shiver, but it curls a warm passage down inside me and I like the thought of it, a secret red ribbon threading through me. I wish Jasmine could see me now: sitting on my bed, beside this beautiful sleeping boy with the glass of wine in my hand, about to pour myself another – after all it’s my birthday.

  I spill a little on the white duvet and it doesn’t look like Ribena, so I drain the glass and set it carefully on the shelf beside the ice-skating pony. Luke doesn’t stir at all. I try to match my breaths with his. I stroke his hand with one finger and, unexpectedly, wonderfully, his hand closes round mine.

  I press my lips against the nape of his neck. I am so happy.

  _____________

  ‘Esther! Esther! What on earth? Pamela! Come here!’

  The room explodes into shouting and confusion. Dad’s face in the doorway, purple. Luke’s weight against me, Luke’s eyelids flickering.

  I struggle to sit up and my head reels and my stomach sloshes. In a moment I remember – the wine. Happy birthday, Esther.

  ‘Pamela! For goodness sake come and –’

  Dad looms closer. ‘Dad – it’s OK. It’s not …’ But I can’t find the words to explain and my tongue feels twice its normal size. My eyes flit round the room, lighting on the wine bottle, half empty, Luke’s trousers on the radiator.

  Luke shifts and murmurs beside me.

  ‘You – get out of my daughter’s bed.’ Dad actually shakes him, and Luke wakes up faster than I knew anyone could, springs into instant alertness and swings back his arm in a punch –

  I scream. ‘Don’t!’ I grab his arm, yank it down, shocked at its rigid strength. ‘For God’s sake – Dad ! It’s not …’

  Mum appears in the doorway, her mouth an O of disbelief. ‘Oh, Esther. We trusted you – you said you …’

  ‘It’s not – it’s honestly not what you think. Luke was just –’

  ‘Don’t bother.’ Luke wrenches away from me, pushes past Dad, pulls his trousers off the radiator and yanks them on. He looks round for his shoes and pulls those on too, without a word. His face terrifies me. The post-seizure daze on his face has been replaced by an ugly mask of hatred.

  Dad rants. Trusted you – that kind of boy – drunkenness –

  I try to explain. I try. But when I try to get up he’s right about one thing. If this swirling, room-spinning, dry-mouthed, heaving panic inside me is drunkenness then I am very drunk indeed –

  – and Dad’s shouting and shouting, ‘Get out and don’t ever come back to this house, and stay away from my daughter, do you hear, stay away –’

  – and Luke’s storming out –

  – and now it’s me who’s suddenly puking, horribly red, all over my dress and the cream carpet.

  Luke

  At the top of Esther’s street I look round, half-expecting to see her dad’s sweating bulk coming after me. He’s mad enough to.

  I’m not really checking for Big Willy. I’m checking for Esther. But she’s stayed with them.

  Two kids are snogging in the bus shelter. He has his hands round her bum and keeps kneading it, dirty little bastard; he’s only about thirteen.

  And who ar
e you to –

  Not now.

  She has hanks of his long shaggy hair wrapped round her fingers. They both give me death looks every time they come up for air, but it’s raining and tonight’s been shit enough without getting a soaking. My watch says it’s nearly ten o’clock. We must have slept for ages. And that bit of it hadn’t been shit. I remember the feel of Esther’s arms holding me, her breath warm against my neck.

  ‘Ouch,’ says the boy. ‘You pulled my hair, you stupid bitch.’

  I decide I’d rather stand in the rain.

  The bus, when it finally lumbers up, is pretty empty; it’s the next one, the last one, that’ll be full of drunks. When I reach into my pocket for the fare, I realise I don’t have my phone. I can’t remember if I had it earlier or not.

  The headache, which had faded away in Esther’s bed, has been conjured back by the rude awakening, the running, the rain and the bus, and by the time I’m walking down Sandra’s street, dodging a heap of chip wrappers abandoned under a streetlight, I’m knackered. I’d like to creep up to bed without talking to anyone, but the Skoda outside and the light in the window tell me they’re home.

  I look at the slightly scraped blue paint of their door. It feels like days since I locked it behind me but it was only a few hours ago. I step into the hall and breathe out.

  Sandra’s voice drifts over the noise of Saturday night TV. ‘You’re back early.’ I push open the living room door. They’re side by side on the sofa. Sandra has her feet in Bill’s lap and Bill’s rubbing them. I’ve never seen them like this before. Jay looks up from the other armchair and yawns.

  Sandra twists her head to smile at me. ‘Had you a good time?’

  ‘All right, son,’ Bill says. ‘There’s tea not long made if you want a cup.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Well?’ Her face is as eager as her voice.

  ‘Och, Sandra, leave the lad alone. He doesn’t want to tell us every detail.’

  ‘It was …’ I look down at the plate of KitKats on the coffee table. I’m starving. I reach out for one and unwrap it.

  ‘You can’t have had a great dinner when you’re still looking for biscuits.’

  ‘Och, Sandra, growing lads.’ Bill winks at me.

  They’re so normal, so nice, so themselves, so not the kind of people who’d do what Big Willy’s just done, that I end up telling them.

  ‘We didn’t go,’ I say. ‘I had a seizure. I’m fine!’ I add when I see the concern in Sandra’s eyes. ‘I’m completely fine.’

  Sandra and Bill look at each other. I look at the KitKat in my hand. I run my nail along the fold between the two fingers.

  ‘Och, son,’ Sandra says. ‘Did you take your medication?’

  I’m about to give my usual indignant reply to this, when I remember. I got up late and rushed around all day. I didn’t even think about my pills. ‘I forgot.’

  Sandra raises her eyebrows. ‘Well. What do you expect?’

  ‘It’s the first time.’

  ‘Och, but there’s other things, Luke, you know there are – not getting enough sleep.’

  Check.

  ‘Getting stressed out.’

  Economics test. Yuck. Maths test. History essay. Check, I suppose. She’s been reading her leaflets like a good foster carer. And watching me.

  ‘You’re right. It’s my own fault.’

  ‘That’s not what I said. Why don’t you take a few days off school, get yourself back to normal? Take your pills and catch up on your sleep?’

  ‘I can’t – I have a test –’ The familiar panic surges in my chest.

  ‘Either you take a few days off or we’re going to the doctor.’

  I could miss the test. And not have to see Wilson till he’s cooled down.

  But then I wouldn’t see Esther.

  Esther who let her dad throw me out of the house like a thief, who didn’t even try to defend me?

  Sandra’s looking at me in that way which is bossy and kind at the same time, and for once it’s a relief just to give in. So I drink the tea and take my meds, and then I go to bed and sleep for fourteen hours.

  Esther

  So this is a hangover. Yuck. I skulk in my room as long as I can, trying not to look at the stain on the carpet. The room smells of carpet cleaner. I swallow down a fresh wave of nausea as I catch its chemical whiff. Mum must have cleaned up.

  Around eleven the need for water forces me out to the kitchen. Mum’s peeling potatoes at the sink.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Why are you not at church?’

  She sniffs. ‘After the last time we left you on your own? Your dad’s gone.’

  ‘Mum, you wouldn’t let us explain.’

  ‘You were drunk. You were in bed with a boy. Half dressed.’

  ‘I wasn’t! I was on the bed. Fully dressed.’

  ‘We knew there was something going on before we even got into the house,’ Mum goes on as if I hadn’t spoken. She stabs the peeler into a potato and digs out an eye. ‘There was – evidence – on the doorstep.’ She shudders with disgust. ‘So he must have been drunk before he even got here?’

  For a moment I haven’t a clue what she’s on about. Then I remember.

  ‘Mum! You’ve got it totally wrong. Luke wasn’t drinking! He was sick because he’d had a seizure. You know he has epilepsy. He shouldn’t have come out but he didn’t want to let me down because it was my birthday. His trousers got a bit’ – I’m not squeamish but I feel a bit too delicate for all the details – ‘so I made him take them off while I sponged them. He went for a lie-down and he fell asleep. We fell asleep. And that’s it, Mum.’

  I can’t tell her how lovely it was before they came along and spoilt it. What it felt like holding Luke, the relaxed oblivious weight of him against me. And I don’t remember exactly how it ended; I just have a confused memory of shouting and screaming.

  Mum runs clean water into the basin of peeled potatoes. My sand-dry mouth cries out at the lovely cold splash, but I don’t dare to push past her for a glass.

  ‘That’s not it, Esther. You’d certainly been drinking, even if he hadn’t.’

  ‘It was my birthday. I didn’t mean to have such a lot – it was meant to be for the restaurant and I just – I know it was stupid. But you can’t blame Luke. He wasn’t even conscious.’

  Mum sighs. ‘You’re so naïve, Esther – maybe that’s our fault. I know we’ve protected you. But there was never any restaurant booking, was there? That boy intended to get you drunk and take advantage of you – and clearly you allowed him to.’

  ‘Mum!’ It’s so far-fetched it’s nearly funny, but only nearly, because she believes it. And because it’s so much the opposite of how things really are with me and Luke. ‘That’s rubbish! Dad just doesn’t like Luke. But I thought you’d make up your own mind. If you have one.’

  Mum’s face stiffens into hurt. Then Dad walks in in his church suit, and my stomach lurches.

  ‘I hope your mother’s made our feelings about last night perfectly clear?’ He looks challengingly at Mum.

  The need for water is urgent. I take a glass from the cupboard and fill it at the cold tap. I could do with some pain-killers too but I daren’t look for them with Mum and Dad both here. I drain the glass and turn to Dad.

  ‘I’ve explained to Mum,’ I say. ‘And it was nothing like you think.’

  Mum looks unhappy.

  ‘Pamela?’

  ‘I don’t know, Alec. We may have been a wee bit hasty –’

  ‘Hasty?’ Dad gives one of the snorts that people at school imitate. ‘It was quite clear what had been going on. She was completely incapable – that boy could have done anything.’

  ‘He never touched me – not the way you mean. He never has. I’m a virgin.’ I raise my voice. ‘OK? I’m. A. Virgin.’

  ‘Esther!’

  ‘But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? You think Luke’s – violated my honour.’ I’ve started sounding as ridiculous as them. Maybe I’m still
a bit drunk. I take a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m sorry for getting drunk – but that is the only thing I did wrong. That and being stupid enough to think you’d treat my boyfriend with any kind of respect.’

  ‘Respect! Did you see our doorstep?’

  I put my head in my hands. I can’t go through this again.

  ‘I’m going out,’ I say.

  Mum shoots Dad an uneasy look.

  ‘You most certainly are not going out. You’re grounded!’ Dad snaps.

  ‘That’s ridiculous! I’m seventeen. You can’t ground me.’

  ‘Either you promise not to see that … that boy again – or you’re grounded indefinitely.’

  ‘Of course I won’t promise!’ I need to see Luke now; I can’t wait until school tomorrow. ‘Mum?’ I turn to her. ‘Will you please tell Dad I can’t be grounded?’

  Mum bites her lip and shakes her head. ‘We can’t trust you, Essie.’

  ‘Obviously you’ll go to school,’ Dad says, ‘and if you’d like to resume going to church activities – well, that would be fine. But that’s all.’

  ‘Ruth’s house?’ I could pretend to go to Ruth’s, but really see Luke.

  They exchange looks again. ‘I could take her, Alec,’ Mum says, ‘and pick her up again.’

  Dad hesitates.

  ‘Don’t bother.’ I storm out and back to my room.

  I lie on the bed and try to smell Luke’s hair on the pillow. He hasn’t texted or phoned. I want to speak to him so badly, but I’m kind of nervous too. In the end I just text.

  World War 3 here.

  Grounded for ever.

  Haven’t opened your

  present yet, want to be

  with you. Meet at WM,

  before school?

  There’s no reply. I alternate between anger and worry. Maybe he didn’t get home OK last night. After all, he was still in that woozy post-seizure state. I shouldn’t have let Dad throw him out; I should have gone after him. I blush when I think of the state I was in which meant I couldn’t. The wrapped-up book sits on the shelf beside the ice-skating pony.