Stockholm Syndrome [01] - Stockholm Syndrome (50 page)

He feels stupid knocking on the living room door but he feels like he has to do it anyway because people don't shut doors in such an end-of-story way unless they really mean it. It's a silly, timid little tap of the knuckles at first, then a bit louder when there's still no answer, then he breathes in and out and opens the door anyway. The telly's not on, Lindsay's not reading the paper or anything, he's just sitting there in the chair with his cup of coffee in one hand and a half-burned cigarette in the other, not looking like he's paying that much attention to either.

"You're getting ash on the floor," Pip says after a minute.

"What? Oh. Shit." He doesn't sound that concerned, though. He drops the fag end in his mug and puts the mug on the little table next to him, and just looks at his hands.

"Am I allowed to come in?"

"Do what you want." It's the same bleak, dead voice he's been using since it all kicked off.

"Alright," Pip says quietly. He goes over to kneel in front of Lindsay's chair, sitting back on his heels and hesitating, then touching Lindsay's hand anyway. He sort of expects him to snatch it away, or slap at him, or something, but Lindsay doesn't move. "Is this okay?"

"Don't touch me," Lindsay says. It's not a command, like it usually is.

He just sounds sort of plaintive, almost like he's begging for his life. Pip draws his hands back, twisting them together in his lap nervously. He didn't plan this far. Never really thought about the fallout.

Lindsay didn't kill him, though. Hasn't told him he's got to pack up and 403

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get the fuck out. He even made perfect coffee, with too much milk and too much sugar even though he says it makes him sick. All good signs, surely.

Pip gets up onto his feet and takes Lindsay's mug into the kitchen to wash it. He closes the door behind himself – but he does it gently, not like a full stop. Maybe like a comma, or one of those things where it's a comma with a dot floating over the top of it. Something else. Something that doesn't mean the end, just a little pause.

Nothing to do now except wait, really. He's never been any good at waiting. He manages to hold on about twenty minutes, then he has to make another cup of coffee. He takes it into the living room and sits there in the middle of the sofa, hugging his knees to himself and watching Lindsay over the top of them. Lindsay doesn't look at him, but he drinks the coffee. That's got to be a good thing. Later on still, he goes back into the kitchen to make a cheese and pickle toastie in the Breville and heat up a mug of tomato soup in the microwave.

Proper comfort food, or that's the idea. Lindsay's got the news on again when Pip goes back in. He eats his sandwich and drinks his soup and watches the telly. Pip goes away again to bring him a beer, then goes away again to bring him a whiskey when Lindsay shakes his head. He feels like a puppy, bringing unwanted presents to its master. Stupid. He's got a collar upstairs somewhere, he remembers. Nothing pervy, nothing like that, it's just something he used to wear through his goth phase in Year 10 and never got rid of. Lindsay thinks it's stupid.

It
is
pretty stupid.

Pip washes their plates and cups by hand because it'll take longer than just bunging them in the dishwasher. The channel's changed when he goes back in the other room, some kind of panel show, but it's muted now. Lindsay's got his head back against the chair and his eyes closed, but he's not sleeping. Pip knows how he breathes when he's sleeping and how he breathes when he's
pretending
he's sleeping. He's pretending, but probably won't be for much longer. He looks tired, big dark smudges under his eyes.

"Please look at me," Pip says suddenly. He's been trying and nothing's been working, he doesn't mind begging now. He slips down off the sofa, down

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onto his knees in front of Lindsay's chair, like earlier. "Please. Please look at me."

"I really don't want to."

He doesn't open his eyes. He looks strange when he's completely clean-shaven, it's so rare now. He looks younger. He looks like how he looked when they first met, when it was just a stranger on the street grabbing at Pip's t-shirt and then wrenching his arm up behind his back, tucking the end of a gun against his ear and whispering roughly against the other, "Stop it. Stop moving. Stop kicking me. Stop it and I won't kill you, okay? Are you listening? Do as you're told and I won't kill you." He can remember the stab of terror like it only happened five minutes ago, and how he squeezed his eyes shut and prayed he wouldn't piss himself – but there was something else too, a stab of
something
else
when he felt the hot breath hissing into his ear, the man's arm around his chest, the way they fit together, pressed as tightly as books on a shelf. The gun.

Realising this could be the last thing he ever felt, this stranger's cock against his arse – people were screaming, the jewellers' alarm was right above his head making it ring like a bell, there were gunshots, there was blood, and he suddenly couldn't keep his breathing steady. Maybe he wouldn't have felt it if he'd actually pulled at the party the night before, if he hadn't wasted all that effort chatting people up only for them to sort of fade away when it got late enough to leave without looking like a proper rude wanker. Maybe he still would. Maybe it really
was
meant to be. He's said it over and over, all about fate, soulmates, stuff like that. A lot of it's to do with how ridiculous Lindsay says he's being, because when Lindsay thinks he's being ridiculous then he usually takes it on himself to show Pip who's smarter and older and better and that
always
, without fail, leads to really brilliant sex – but that's not the only reason. He keeps on saying it, throwing out numbers like evidence: all the people in the world and they
just
happened
to meet, that's too amazing to be a coincidence. He believes in it the way he believes in rock 'n' roll changing the world, or the way he believes in West Ham, or the way his grandad used to believe in God: it's this blind, absolute faith that can't be shaken no matter what. Bob Geldof turned out to be a right cunt, West Ham lose matches all the time, God must have been scratching 405

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his arse or something when Grandad George was riddled with cancer and stinking out the hospice, and now Lindsay can't even look him in the eye, but if you don't believe in something impossible then what the fuck's the point? Life's a dot-to-dot then, or a colour-by-numbers. There's no Sistine Chapel or Gaudí's Barcelona if you don't believe in crazy, impossible magic.

So: "Please," he says again. "Can you just look at me? For one second.

Half a second. Not even that. Just look at me.
Please
."

Lindsay looks at him, and Pip wants to cry, or laugh, or maybe both together.

"You look like shit," he says instead. He really wants to hold Lindsay's hand. It's just there, resting on his leg, waiting to be picked up. He doesn't do it, he just wants to. One step at a time. "You should go to bed. I'll be quiet. I won't bother you. You should go to sleep. Do you want more tea or... anything? Can I do anything?"

"You can leave me alone," Lindsay says. There's no menace in it, he doesn't sound angry or threatening. It's just an answer to a question and Pip watches him walk out of the room, hears the tread of feet on thirteen steps and the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing.

Pip gets up into Lindsay's chair, curling up small like a kitten so he can rest his head against the arm, and that's where he sleeps.

***

Halfway through the next morning, stiff and grumpy from sleeping on the chair, wearing an outfit of crispy clothes he's managed to piece together from everything drying on the radiators because he didn't want to disturb Lindsay if he was still sleeping, Pip leans against the wall in the upstairs hallway, arms folded, scowling, watching Lindsay screw a bolt onto the bedroom door.

"What the fuck are you doing that for?"

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Lindsay doesn't look up, he just stays focused on the screwdriver, working steadily. "I can't."

"Can't

what?"

"Anything. Look at you."

"I'll stay out your way. Just ask me. I'll stay out your way if you want, if you tell me to."

"I don't trust you."

"Fucksake. I ain't gonna come in and grab you in the middle of the night if you don't want it, I ain't a rapist."

"No, no. Just a murderer, right?"

And that's not fair, really, because that's not what happened, only Lindsay's too stubborn to listen. He didn't know they'd end up dead. He only wanted to scare them. Ty, really. Just wanted him to piss himself with fear, just for
once
get that fucking smug smile off his face. Maybe get him sent down for years and years, yeah – and it's not like he's
bothered
that the bloke's gone for good, because he's not at all, but he didn't mean it to turn out the way it did. Ain't my fault, he wants to say, all sulky and petulant like a teenager. How's it
my
fault the police are all crooked and you boss a little gang of deathwishers and the whole fucking lot of you wave guns around like they're water pistols? That's not what he says, though. He only manages a whiny little, "Lindsay..." and he kind of hates himself for it, because he's
trying
to be good and let things run their course, just wait patiently for Lindsay to sort himself out, but it's so
hard
.

They stay there a little while, Pip leaning against the wall and Lindsay kneeling in the doorway, both staring at different patches of carpet, silent.

"Go away," Lindsay says eventually. He's fiddling with the screwdriver, pressing the sharp end against his fingertip until the flesh turns white, moving it away so the blood rushes back and the flesh turns red, pressing it back in the purpling dent again. "You've got your own room."

Pip hesitates, wondering how far he can push it. "Do you want me to 407

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tidy it?"

"What?"

"Are you sending me to tidy my room?"

"What do I care if you want to live in squalor? Please."

It'd be so much easier if he shouted, all of this. Whatever 'this' is. Maybe if he threw a punch it'd knock everything back into place. Pip bites his tongue to keep the words on it and just steps around him, to fetch his hairdryer and some clothes and Mister Bollo. He takes everything to the spare bedroom down the hall and sits on the bed, just breathing, just waiting for something to happen, although he knows it won't. It makes him nervous, this room. It always makes him think about how things
used
to be, back near the beginning, when Lindsay wasn't used to sharing his house with another person yet. He always got on Lindsay's nerves and was sent here out of the way, or if he was in trouble for something here's where Lindsay used to bring him to tell him off. He still can't shake the queasy feeling of apprehension.

He remembers right when it all started, the pretend kidnap and the ransom pick-up and how he told Lindsay he'd rather be fucking dead than go back home whether they'd paid up or not. Lindsay wondered out loud whether they might pay more, and Pip felt all silly and giddy like a teenage girl in love.

"They might," he said. "Does that mean I get to stay here a bit longer?" Lindsay laughed at him, walking his fingers up and down Pip's ribs like a ladder – they were still in bed, it was just after their third time. Pip felt all sweaty and sticky and a bit sore and wet and horrible down there because they weren't using johnnies, but even more than that he felt like if he didn't keep his fingers where they were, cramped and twisted in Lindsay's hair, then he was going to float away like a party balloon.
He reckons I'm worth more than five million
, was all he could think, and he couldn't find the words to explain to Lindsay why he was grinning like the village idiot when he asked.

He painted on the walls in the spare room. Lindsay had to keep up the pretence he was still living on his own and nothing at all was different, he still

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had to go out for dinner and go to the pub with his friends and his mum, he still had to go in to work a few times a week. He still had people over to the house, and those were the worst times of all – at least he could wander around the house and watch telly and play on the computer if Lindsay was just out. When other people were over, he had to stay in his room and be quiet. Lindsay finally got annoyed with the whingeing and asked what he wanted to amuse himself with that didn't involve
noise
, so Pip asked for paints and when Lindsay bought him some he started turning his fucking magnolia prison into a masterpiece, like a little indie Michelangelo.

"You could've asked for permission first," Lindsay said the first time he got a look at it, but he didn't sound angry. "What's wrong with that canvas I bought you?"

"Filled it already," Pip said. He nodded over at the cartoony sort of crocodile, propped up against the side of the dresser. Lindsay's mother
wouldn't
leave
, Pip had been stuck up there in the bedroom for hours and hours. He was pleased with the crocodile, he didn't want to paint over it just because he was bored out his mind, not when there was all this blank wall space just waiting for a brush. He'd had enough time to get a good start on his trompe-l'œil, right next to the real window, but instead of double-glazing and rocks and choppy sea his new one had open blue shutters and a view of snow-capped mountains, the beginnings of a vase of flowers on the wooden windowsill, and a tiny ginger kitten reaching up to bat at a daffodil with its paw.

"Looks like France," Lindsay said.

"I ain't been. I just made it up out my head cos I was fucking bored." Pip felt annoyed, now he knew he wasn't in trouble, and for the first time he wished Lindsay would just piss off and leave him alone for a bit so he could get on with things. "Can you buy me more paints? I wanna do windows everywhere."