The Sick Rose (29 page)

‘Paul, listen to me. I do understand, I do. When I was eighteen, I killed my lover. His name was Adam.’

Chapter 37

June 1989

She hailed a cab on Gloucester Road. The lumbering, arrhythmic pace of the taxi was at odds with the pounding velocity of her thoughts. Her first instinct had been right all along, the paper in her hand evidence of suspicions she had convinced herself were unfounded. There had only been one other woman with them on the night of the Vauxhall show, the woman who was always there, the one he confided in, someone who might not be beautiful but who had nevertheless accessed the private part of Adam that Louisa had never been able to touch. She didn’t know who she was angrier with: herself, for having ignored all the signs and warnings about Adam; him, for the lies he had told her and for making her fall in love with him in the first place; or Angie, who had listened to her talk about the problems she had caused, crafting a reputation for peace and mediation when all the time she had been fucking him behind her back. Not just Angie. They had
all
been in on it, all four of them, they must have. Every snigger, every snide aside they had ever made was now recast in the light of his betrayal. They would have laughed themselves stupid when she wasn’t there. Nothing hurt Louisa more than the thought of being a laughing stock. Why had they chosen
her
to play their cruel game with?

Shepherd’s Bush Green was settling down for the night; dossers were colonising shop doorways and the dark triangle of the park. Only a couple of kebab shops and off-licences remained open. As they joined Uxbridge Road, the meter told her that the fare already exceeded the cash in her pocket: she had to get out half a mile away from the house. She ran. Her feet were light but her hands were hot, hard fists. She felt capable of battering the door down with her bare knuckles; she felt capable of blowing it down.

Electronic music tumbled from an upstairs window but the only light in the house came from the downstairs room, the one where Angie slept, a pinkish glow through a chink in the curtains. Louisa crept across the knee-high weeds of the front garden to squint through the curtains, knowing that she might see them together and liquid with fear at the thought of it. Angie lay alone on top of the duvet, a paperback propped up on her pillow. She was wearing glasses and a pale blue dressing gown. She looked unforgivably plain. Louisa went to the front door and knocked with surprising restraint, as though saving her energy for the violence that must come later. A blue blob swam into focus as Angie opened the door fractionally. Her face was a mask of surprise and then she composed herself and almost shouted:

‘Louisa! It’s late, I was just going to bed,’ and then, in a normal tone, ‘This is a surprise.’

She got another surprise when Louisa grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her into the sitting room. Angie lost her balance and fell on her backside, dressing gown riding up and open to reveal an oversized grey T-shirt (Adam’s?) and thick bare legs peppered with stubble.

‘Who with?’ snarled Louisa.

Angie pulled the dressing gown across herself and drew her legs in. ‘Louisa, what the fuck?’ she said.

‘Who were you going to bed with? My boyfriend?’

‘No.’ Angie got to her feet.

‘Don’t deny it!’ said Louisa. She unfolded the poster. The image had smudged but the biro on the back had not. When Angie saw the writing her whole face changed, not into the expected expression of exposure and remorse but something closer to pity.

‘Listen, it’s not what you think . . .’ Louisa raised her hand, noticing as she brought it down that her silver rose ring had twisted so that the flower was on the inside. It caught Angie smack on the cheekbone and she staggered back. She was clearly shaken but her voice was the same even tone she used to arbitrate band disputes. ‘Stop it, Louisa. Calm down.’

‘Don’t tell me to calm down, you patronising . . . you lying
bitch
. Acting so friendly to my face and the whole time . . . What is it, can’t get your own boyfriend so you have to steal someone else’s?’

Angie remained silent. The nature of the wound changed with every second. There was a blushed handprint on her cheek, a ring of white skin around the red gash. ‘You sad, fat little cow,’ said Louisa. ‘You know he laughs at you behind your back? He thinks you’re ugly, he told me.’

‘Do you know what?’ said Angie, throwing up her hands. ‘This has got
nothing
to do with me. Tell him yourself. I’ve had it with the lot of you. First-floor landing, it’s the only door.’

The stairs felt like sponge. She hesitated fractionally at the door, which was closed, then kicked it, obeying the same act-now, think-later instinct that had brought her here in the first place.

Afterwards, when she thought about it, she found that she saw two separate images in quick succession, and that she held them in her head quite separately. The second image that she registered was the bedroom itself. A single Anglepoise lamp showed her beige walls, uneven Venetian blinds, piles of notebooks and a wardrobe full of black clothes with its doors missing. But she would not recall that until days later.

What held her attention at the very first look was the foreground. Adam knelt on the bed, a stride away from her. He was shirtless, a string of jet beads she had never seen before reaching almost to his navel, his jeans rucked down around his thighs. His eyes were closed but his face wore an expression she was used to; she watched his features crumple in surrender. She did not need to count the seconds – one, two, three, four – until his eyelids flickered apart as they always did. This time, they went on to widen in terror, the spaces between his features growing too large as panic rearranged them. Look at me, she thought, the least you can do is keep your eyes on mine – but he allowed them to flick downwards. Kneeling on the floor as though in prayer, his hands on Adam’s thighs and entirely unaware of her presence, was Ciaran.

Chapter 38

She zigzagged through the indistinguishable backstreets trying to find the Uxbridge Road. It was the other side of midnight and there were few cars. The only people she passed were a couple of men in jeans and Queens Park Rangers T-shirts. They exhaled lager and belligerence but she met their aggressive stares with a challenge of her own. She had enough rage inside her to take on a coachload of football fans.

She recognised his footsteps. His tread was measured and even but his breath was ragged, as though he’d been running. He put one hand on her shoulder like an arresting officer. She shrugged it off.

‘Louisa, stop,’ he said. ‘I can explain.’ She turned to face him. ‘Oh, Louisa, please don’t cry.’ He looked stricken but not sorry, as though someone else had done this to her. He thumbed away a tear before she could stop him.

‘How can you . . .’ she began, but she was crying too hard to get the words out. ‘How can you explain, what can you . . .’ She gained control of her breath. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s not what it looked like?’

‘It’s not.’

‘Because it
looks
like I just saw you getting sucked off by another bloke.’

‘Look, it was just a one-off.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ She would never believe anything anyone said ever again.

‘It was just a laugh. Look on the bright side, we could always have the best of both worlds, make it a threesome.’ Those sickle-shaped dimples that heralded a smile were there, then his lips parted and he was laughing at her. She went to slap his face but he was quicker than Angie and he caught her at the wrist. His grip was light but instinct told her not to struggle. ‘Oh, come on, Louisa, it was a
joke
.’

‘Do I look like I’m laughing? Was Ciaran laughing when he wrote this?’ With her free hand she pulled out the love note. A mad little surge of hope was dancing inside her ribcage, although she didn’t know what it was that she was hoping for. That it
was
Ciaran’s writing? That it
wasn’t
?

He let her arm drop. ‘Ah.’ He wasn’t going to deny it.

‘But you don’t even like each other, you’re always fighting.’ There was a shrivelling feeling in the pit of her abdomen. She recalled every one of Ciaran’s jealous, hungry glances in her direction. Refracted through the prism of her new knowledge, the pictures were completely different. She had recognised thwarted desire, but not its object.

‘It’s complicated.’

‘I’ll fucking say so. I mean, what
is
this? You calling him Eve? That’s supposed to be my name. Is it just easier to call everyone Eve? How many of us are there? It’s fucked up, you’re
sick
.’

‘There’s just the two of you.’

‘Oh, I’m honoured.’

‘Look, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s got this
thing
about me.’

‘I was there, I
saw
you. He wasn’t forcing himself on you.’

‘I’m not
queer
if that’s what you think.’ He spat out the word like poison. In any other circumstance she would have been sickened by this homophobia, would have launched into a disgusted, righteous tirade. Now, she was appalled to
realise
, she was reassured by it.

‘I find you with your – your – your . . . and you say you’re not . . . Oh God, Adam, we weren’t using protection. I might have AIDS.’

‘You haven’t, I promise, I never let him . . . Look, Ciaran was just a . . . situation that I got myself into. I wish I could get myself out of it without breaking up the band. It’s not easy for me, keeping you apart, trying to make sure neither of you got hurt. It’s been killing me.’

‘Are you asking me to feel
sorry
for you?’

‘I’m just trying to make you see things from my point of view,’ he said. ‘I’m not used to saying no to people, it’s hard. It’s
you
I love. I could have carried on shagging this girl I was seeing before you and I didn’t.’

‘Are you telling me I’m lucky it was
only
Ciaran?’ she said.

‘Yes! No. I’m saying that in all the ways that count, I’m faithful to you.’

He actually seemed to believe it. Louisa couldn’t bear to hear any more. She began to walk, all the way up Uxbridge Road, past the rattling skeletons of stalls at Shepherd’s Bush market. She ought to be exhausted but she wasn’t tired, she could have walked until she reached the sea. He trod on her shadow all the way.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she said.

‘Walking you home.’ He kept pace with her as she crossed the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout at street level. It was a warm, breezy night; wind whipped up little whirlpools of litter in the gutters. He followed her to the top of Holland Park Road. She turned left to cut through Warwick Gardens, where big pillared houses gave way to pretty Georgian terraces. Here the air was perceptibly cleaner. Instead of carrier bags and crisp packets, leaves and petals chased each other on currents of air. She knew that she would never be able to tread this pavement again; there were so many streets now that were infused with memories of Adam. In the future, London would be a grid of forbidden streets, she would have to avoid the landmarks he had made. Because it had to end; no high was worth this low. There was nothing he could say that could undo what he had done.

‘I’ve told him it’s over,’ he said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. ‘Him, the band, everything.’

Except for that. She halted as though he had pulled on her reins. He could not have chosen words better to halt her . . . and he knew it, she realised. They were only words. It was only a game. She picked up her pace again.

‘Did you hear what I said?’ He kept his voice low and tried to hold her hand. ‘Don’t walk away from me, Louisa!’

At the other end of the street, a door slammed and there was the sound of car keys being dropped on the pavement; the road was so quiet the clink of metal on stone resonated like the proverbial dropped pin. He tilted her chin. She wanted, despite everything, to give in to his kiss. That was the thing about life with Adam. It was sensational. Was she really ready to let it all go? But something inside her would not allow it.

‘I just don’t believe you any more.’ Her voice was almost lost under the sound of a key turning in an ignition. The fingertips that had been stroking her skin suddenly dug into the hollows of her cheeks, pressing the insides of her cheeks together, forcing her tongue between her lips. There was nothing beautiful about her now; the car driver stopped being a potential audience and became a potential rescuer. Adam’s arm curled round her in an iron clinch.

‘You ungrateful little bitch,’ he said.

He had held her mock-captive before in bed but this was different. The disparity between his physical might and hers hit home for the first time. A fortifying surge of panic allowed her to shove her way out of his embrace, bringing her hands up between his arms and forcing them sharply outwards. She felt all the lost power of the last few months come surging through her palms. The push of her hands against his chest was the best feeling she had ever known.

Adam staggered backwards and lost his footing on the edge of the kerb.

Something strange happened to time. The car was moving fast, too fast, but the seconds started to stretch out. Louisa saw the car coming towards them, saw the slow-motion trajectory Adam’s fall was going to take and knew that he would not regain his balance without her help. He saw it too and reached for her. She stretched her hands out far enough for him to brush her fingertips but not to grip; his knuckles bent to form a desperate hook, trying to lock on to her. He lurched backwards again, into the path of the car. Louisa darted forward and in that slowed-down second she saw his face relax into its customary arrogance, as though he had known all along that she would save him.