Painkiller (6 page)

‘But they don’t say that, do they?’

‘No. That’s just me saying that,’ I say reluctantly. ‘But it stands to reason, doesn’t it? When you pluck your eyebrows, it doesn’t hurt so much after you do it for years and years. That’s my logic and I’m sticking to it.’

‘Hmmm. Right.’

‘If I get some relief, even if it’s only temporary, I might be able to come off the drugs for a month or two. And I’ll be helping their research. That’s a good thing, surely.’

‘Yes, it would be a good thing.’

He just says it as a fact;
helping people is a good thing, that is certainly true
. Not approving or disapproving.

‘Well well,’ he says at last. ‘Very interesting.’ And then he says ‘well well’ again.

Then he closes down the computer and leaves. I’m still sitting there, slightly underwhelmed, humming from the anticlimax, when his words float from the kitchen.

‘Fancy a cup of tea…?’

It’s later, and I want to talk more, but when I emerge he is already parked in front of the television, hand poised on the remote. He’s not inviting discussion.

I make and drink my laxative and I sit with him, and we watch together. We exhaust everything the television has to offer and go to bed. As I’m not too bad today we end up in the same bedroom. He gets undressed as I watch, coyly taking off his shirt behind the wardrobe door before emerging in his long T-shirt, shorts and tiger slippers. The effect is comical.

He’s very careful not to jiggle the bed as his (
vast
)
bottom descends on the edge of the mattress. He’s very good like that. We sleep a respectful foot apart on the huge orthopaedic bed.

Once he gets in and the light goes off, his hand snakes over to my side, and rests gently on my belly. Then it starts gliding up and down in a stroking motion; up to the bottom of my breasts, and down to my abdomen. Up and down. Up and down.

I rest my hand on his, and I bring it up, kiss it. And put it back on my belly, holding it motionless.

‘Good night, darling.’

‘Good night.’

I hate myself.

One of the few nights I’m capable of making love, I just don’t feel like it.

That journey to Doctor Kumar drained my batteries. These days I’m like an iPhone with too many apps left open; if I want to do anything that requires energy, I have to do it quickly before I go completely dead.

After a few minutes the hand snakes away and he rolls onto his side, his breathing slow and regular and gentle. He’s not (
bloody
) snoring tonight, but the noise is enough.

Those sodding drugs.

My senses are too acute.

Everything is noisy.

Everything is unfiltered.

I’m thinking about noises, and I can’t get to sleep.

I’m thinking about the
peck peck peck peck
as Dominic typed in his password.

Peck peck peck peck.
 

I count the
pecks
in the study just like I count the
thuds
going up the stairs.

Peck peck peck peck.
 

That can’t be right.

Peck peck peck p
…
 

I wake up…

… Not too bad today.

So I decide to go and see Niall; can’t put it off any more. I need him.

Niall can be annoying; he’s a bit needy, as some men can be, as you can probably gather from the texts with too many kisses and the lopsided smiley faces, but I can’t deny that he is one of the few good things in my life. Literally a godsend.

He dropped from heaven one day, about two years ago, when I was trying to get my life back.

I’d gone to the gym to get a massage, trying to ease the headache that had been squeezed into my brain. The massage was very thorough, but it didn’t seem to do anything. I was walking through the gym, watching the people on the treadmills, legs lifting up and down, arms pummelling the air, bodies gliding back on forth on the rowing machines —

I used to do that
, I thought, with naked envy.
I used to do that every day. I’d spend half an hour on the treadmill and think nothing of it. Now I can’t twist a doorknob without crippling myself.

— and I was suddenly taken by a roar of agony, the heat rushed up, the inkwell beckoned, and I knew I was going to faint. I cringed at the embarrassment of doing it there. I lay on a bench, flat on my back, and pretended I was stretching my arms, waiting for the shimmering on the edge of my vision to stop.

There was a pair of well-toned calves by my head.

‘Hello.’ A male voice.

Through the haze I could see chunky sports socks hugging thick ankles. It looked like his shins were wearing roll-neck sweaters.

He continued. ‘Don’t we know each other?’

A pathetic chat-up line. I’m sure I should have come up with a hundred withering put-downs. All I managed at that point was an ‘I don’t think so’.

‘I’m sure we do.’

‘We’ll have to agree to differ on that.’

‘How’s the pain?’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Is it bad today?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You’re in a lot of pain.’

‘Go away.’

‘It’s all right, Monica. I understand. Your secret is safe with me.’

‘Fuck off.’

He turned and left. I could see more of him – well, the back of him. I watched his shiny blue buttocks oscillate away, taking it in turns to wobble as he moved to another part of the gym. He pulled weights, shimmering and flickering gently as my Angry Friend fluttered his fingers in my eye-line. It almost felt like my Angry Friend was trying to distract me from this mysterious man.

He was saying (
Move away! Nothing to see here! Gosh, Monica! Look at those expensive trainers! Look at that man reading the news on that television on the wall! Look at that fat man! Look over there! And there! Look at anything else but that guy!
)

But I refused to be distracted. My Angry Friend was doing this for some evil purpose of his own. I knew then that this man with his shiny blue buttocks was the key to something important.

‘Screw you,’ I said under my breath to my Angry Friend. ‘I’m going to talk to him.’

Of course I had to talk to him. It felt like this stranger had just scanned me like a barcode and, somewhere far away, the word ‘cripple’ had lit up on the screen of an omnipresent machine in a dusty government building.

I pulled myself up and walked over.

‘OK…’

‘What?’

‘How did you know my name?’

‘I’m a mind reader.’

‘Don’t be an arsehole.’

He smiled, and held his hand against his forehead theatrically. ‘I knew you were going to say that.’

‘Are you following me?’

‘I come here all the time. It’s my local.’

‘So you say.’

He smiled helplessly. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’ He stroked his tidy beard suspiciously. ‘Hmmm. Perhaps
you’re
following
me.
’

My Angry Friend was dragging me away by the arm, pulling me to the exit. It was just a matter of time before I fell down the rabbit hole, so I spoke quickly.

‘I haven’t got time for this bollocks.’ I wanted to turn abruptly and stalk away, but of course there was no chance of that. I pirouetted awkwardly on my right leg, and tried to drag my carcass to the exit.

I only got a few feet when he took pity on me and said: ‘I’m sorry. I’m being a prick. You used to be my agent. When I was an actor.’

‘I did? Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t remember you.’

‘Oh. Well…’

I filled the embarrassing moment. ‘I’m sorry I don’t remember you. A lot’s happened to me since I was an agent. What’s your name?’

He grinned shyly. ‘Niall Stewart.’

Niall Stewart.
The only face that came into my mind was round and chubby. John Lennon glasses. An untidy beard at the front, and a scrappy ponytail bringing up the rear. It didn’t resemble the man squatting in front of me. The face of the Niall Stewart I knew was what I – and casting directors – would call a ‘type’. To my mind, Niall was ‘Disgruntled hippy’. ‘Ugly friend’. ‘Annoying computer nerd’.

I remembered that the Niall Stewart I knew got a slow and steady trickle of work on the strength of his general slobbyness.

But this man could not, in any way, in any form, in any universe, be cast as a slob. He looked like a personal trainer or cycle courier. He was very aerodynamic; short stubbly haircut and trimmed beard, and was obviously very fit, but he wasn’t one of those men that didn’t know when to stop exercising and end up looking like an inflatable doll. I read a book once that described someone as having a ‘tidy physique’. Now I knew what the writer was thinking of.

‘You’re Niall Stewart?’

‘Yes.’

Disbelief must have been scribbled all over my face.

‘I am. Honest.’

He sat up and unzipped the bulge below his waist. I wondered what the hell he was doing, and then I realised he was opening a bum bag. He proffered his driver’s licence. Leaning forward as far as I dared – which was not a lot – I took it, and there were the words ‘Niall Stewart’ and a photo of the rugged-looking man who lay before me.

‘Fine. You’re Niall Stewart. I believe you.’

‘Lucky me.’ He smiled. ‘It’s good to see you again.’

‘I’m sure it is. Now explain how you know I’ve got pain.’

Niall’s eyes darted around him. I suddenly became aware of how noisy it was. The air was filled with grunting and pounding and thumping music.

‘I don’t want to shout about how I know,’ he said. ‘And I guess you don’t want me to shout it either. Let’s go somewhere more private.’

Of course I was intrigued. I had to find out how he knew. What he could see in me. Foolishly, I thought once I had dyed my white roots and stopped walking with the stick, I was able to hide the pain from the world.

I was even foolish enough to think I could hide it from my husband. One day, on a good day, I decided to think positive, look the world in the eye, rise above my condition and do something outrageous. I went to a professional photographer, and had glamorous photos done. I was stark naked, sitting coyly in a wooden chair draped with a sheepskin rug, and though I say so myself, I thought I looked bloody hot.

The photographer thought so too, because even when she didn’t have to look at me through her lens, she still kept looking at me. I could see that easily, even though I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

I got one framed for Dominic, and gave it to him for his birthday.

‘Ooh, I say!’ he said suggestively as I struggled to get this huge package out of the wardrobe. ‘Is it socks?’

He wanted to help me, I could see he was straining to take a corner, because he knew the act of lifting it was sending searing tendrils of hot lava pouring into my arms and legs, but he also knew that I wanted to – that I had to – do this myself. So he waited patiently for an age as I inched his birthday present to where he lay under the duvet.

I leaned over him and nibbled his ear – just the way he likes it – and I watched with almost carnivorous interest as his hands slipped in the seam of the wrapping paper and glided along the edge, separating the tape from the paper.

He pulled it back to reveal me, cross-legged on the chair, one arm up, clutching the sheepskin blanket over my shoulder, the other arm down, elbow bent low, pushing my breast into my body and half-concealing a cheeky nipple.

There you go, tiger
, I thought.
That’s me, baby. Your hot-to-trot girl. Come and get me.

But he looked up, smiled, and thanked me, and when he guided me down and planted a kiss on my forehead, he let me go almost immediately.

He kept his smile fixed on his face as he opened the rest of his cards, like he’d bought the grin from a joke shop. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong. He looked disappointed somehow and it broke my heart. He certainly didn’t mind me being slutty in the past…

Had I been reclassified as an invalid, in his eyes? Was I not supposed to wave my bits in his face like I used to? Was I just supposed to become a smiling sexless creature, and sit, and take it easy, and have cups of tea made for me for the rest of my life?

He opened his cards and his other presents, but his eyes didn’t rest on the picture again.

It was only after he’d gone to the bathroom, and I was left alone with the picture, that I realised. It was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wardrobe, aimed in my direction. It was like a magic picture, the ones where you stare at lots of coloured blobs, and suddenly you see a leaping dolphin.

I saw what Dominic saw. I saw me, in my nudity. I saw my legs, my breasts, my thighs, but most of all I saw the pain in my face, the unnaturally dark crow’s feet from the sleepless nights showing through too much make-up. The eyes open slightly too wide, fighting the weariness, fighting to look like I’m really enjoying sitting in this awkward position, fighting not to show the agony it was causing me.

I felt sick.

It looked like an ugly photo in some paedophile’s collection; where the provocative nakedness of the body was juxtaposed with a face that looked like it didn’t want to be there.

The following morning, when he went to work, I got Agnieszka to put it in the attic. It’s stayed there ever since, and Dominic has never asked about it.

It’s always been our little secret.

So I was intrigued enough to allow Niall to drive me to a pub, The Westbourne, and let him buy me a drink. He plonked down a sparkling water and a tomato juice on our table.

‘Thanks.’

I appraised him out of the corner of my eye. Men think they’re the only ones who do that. They’re wrong, of course. He was still wearing a lot of lycra, shorts and top, but not in a look-at-me kind of a way. But even though his expression was modest and self-effacing, his body could not stop showing off. He sat down on a stool, and his chunky thighs forced him to sit with his legs wide apart, with his huge glory on display.

I felt quite odd sitting there; like my body was going on an adventure and had assumed my mind would tag along for the ride.

I could tell my Angry Friend was furious at this turn of events, because he had sunk his teeth into my legs, and stabbed me in both thighs. (
You shouldn’t be here
), he said.

‘You don’t look like the Niall Stewart I remember. You were…’

‘What?’

‘Different.’

He gave a short, brittle laugh. ‘Well you look exactly the same. Unmistakable.’ He laughed. ‘Unique.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

‘You should.’ He swigged his water. ‘You were a great agent. One of a kind. Well, I thought so. You were the best agent I had.’

‘Are you still acting?’

‘No, not since after the accident. I got injured during a theatre tour a few years back. I was in some rubbish play about the sixties, playing some grungy hippy…’

Of course you were.
 

‘… and I tripped over a scatter cushion in the wings and hurt my back. I was laid up for months – God, the pain was indescribable! And when I managed to finally walk upright I was a martyr to sciatica.’

My mind was hot.
He had an accident. I had an accident. He has sciatica. I am sandblasted by my sciatic nerve. I think I’ve found my soulmate. Someone who might have some inkling of what I’ve been going through. No wonder my Angry Friend is furious.

Niall continued. ‘We, well, that is, me and Equity, we started to sue the theatre company for hundreds of thousands, but Equity got scared…’

I nodded, understanding. I knew the actor’s union very well.

‘… and they settled, and I ended up with peanuts, barely enough to live on. So I had no money, nobody would employ me as thanks to the court case I was now unofficially labelled as a troublemaker, so I decided to take control and do something about the bits of my life I could do something about. I took up physiotherapy, to get my body in shape…’ he waggled his fingers vaguely in the direction of his gluteus maximus, ‘hence the difference in how I look. And now I’m an osteopath. That’s how I knew you had pain.’

‘Just because you’re an osteopath.’

‘Because I could see you were in pain.’

‘But I don’t look like I’m in pain.’

‘Ah. OK, you don’t.’

He let the silence fester between us.

‘Well I don’t!’ I sipped my tomato juice intensely, glaring through the bottom of the glass at him. ‘OK? What?’

‘What?’

‘What was it that gave it away?’

‘It was the way you walked.’

‘I walk fine.’

‘Of course you do.’

‘I do.’

‘Go on then,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘If you walk fine, go and walk up and down this pub.’

‘What?’

‘Go on. Just to that Trivial Pursuit game and back.’

‘No.’

‘If you’re scared…’

‘I’ll look stupid.’

‘If you’re scared of looking stupid…’ He caught my eye. ‘Just walk into the toilets, then. Wait a minute, then come out again.’

I looked at the toilet door. It suddenly shrank into the distance, as though I was staring at it through the wrong end of a telescope.

‘OK fine,’ I said. ‘If it makes you happy…’