Jennie Ensor - The Girl in His Eyes

She stopped. Rachel was looking at her strangely.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Your father really messed with your head, didn’t he? I think that’s why you’re still working at this place. You need these guys to salivate over you, just like he did. Don’t you see? You’re just repeating everything that happened before.’

‘Rachel, will you stop trying to psychoanalyse me? I can do without it, thank you very much.’

She bit her lip. Her reply had escaped without warning. She shouldn’t have retaliated like that.

‘If that’s what you want, fine. But I’m not going to stick around to watch you going downhill. You’re worth more than that, Laura. If you keep on like this, I dread to think where you’ll end up.’

Rachel started clearing away the uneaten food and putting containers into bags. It wasn’t yet 4pm and they still had half a bottle of wine left.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I have some things to do at home.’

‘Can’t we talk about this?’ Her gut felt distinctly odd, as if a hundred fingers were inside it, poking and pulling the tubes, twisting them into knots. ‘You’re my friend, aren’t you? Are you going to walk out on me just because I work in a lap dancing club? That’s crazy.’

Rachel put more things into plastic bags and hurriedly stuffed them into her rucksack. She spoke without looking at her.

‘I’m sorry if I’m hurting you, Laura. I know we’ve been good friends… But you’ve changed. I can’t handle what you’re doing. I can’t cope with it happening again.’

‘You’re not making sense, Rachel. With what happening again?’

‘I’ve had it before, with my sister.’

‘The one in New York?’

‘She’s not in New York anymore, she lives in Nottingham. She used to work for Morgan Stanley. She was doing really well, then she lost her job. It was four years ago. She got depressed, started drinking too much. Then her boyfriend left and she got even more depressed. She stopped talking to me, to Mum, to everyone. We found out where she was staying, tried to help her, gave her the numbers of the local alcohol recovery service and so forth. It didn’t make any difference.’

‘What’s she doing now?’

Rachel took a few seconds to reply.

‘When I last saw her, she was staying in a hostel. A place where homeless women go. Most of them are alcoholics or drug addicts. It’s hard to believe, my sister living somewhere like that.’ Rachel’s eyes glistened. ‘If you want to end up in the gutter, Laura, go ahead. It can happen to anyone, even you. But don’t expect me to hang around watching while you do it.’

A chill went through her. Her best friend, no, her only friend, was walking out on her.

‘I know you’re right, my father fucked me up. I need to change my life, I know I do. But please, don’t go.’ She took a deep breath, tried to stop the press of tears behind her eyes. ‘I don’t know if I can get through this alone.’

‘What do you mean? You might top yourself?’

‘No, I just meant—’

‘You did try once, didn’t you?’ A sharp note entered Rachel’s voice. ‘You told me once you tried to jump off a roof or something. At school.’

‘They thought I was, that was all.’

‘So, what happened? Do you want to tell me about it?’

Laura cleared her throat. She might as well tell the story – there was nothing to lose.

‘It was the lunch break. I was sitting on the grass, reading. The others were playing some game, I could hear them yelling, getting excited. Suddenly, I didn’t know if I could stand it anymore. Feeling so apart from everyone, I mean. I went up to the science labs and climbed out of the window. It had a flat roof. I sat there ages, watching everyone below. I didn’t hear any of the bells ring for lessons. Somehow it was better, sitting up there where no one could see me. Like I was properly alone.’

‘You weren’t going to jump or anything?’

‘I did imagine stepping off the edge. I remember thinking it was only the second floor so the fall might not kill me, I’d probably end up crippled for life instead.’ She heard the quiver in her voice. ‘I knew I didn’t want to be dead, I just wanted to be happy again. I wanted my mother to be happy and my father to go back to normal.’

She wanted to cry, to put her head in Rachel’s lap and let the tears slip silently. But Rachel’s face was closed. Her arms were folded across her body, as if to protect herself.

‘Did they find you up there?’

‘Two teachers came with a ladder to rescue me. I told them I was just going up there to think about stuff, but they didn’t believe me. They thought I’d been about to jump. There was a huge commotion – they made me see an educational psychologist. He asked if everything was OK at home. I said my parents seemed very unhappy together and I wished my father was nicer to us.’

‘That’s all? You couldn’t tell him what your dad was doing?’

‘I thought of how heartbroken my mother would be, how shocked my brother would be. Even though I wanted Dad gone, I didn’t want it to be because of me. I thought if he was taken away from us, my mother wouldn’t be able to deal with it. And I was a bit scared of him. He could get so angry.’

Rachel let out a long breath then turned her head towards her rucksack.

‘You should have told them about him back then. When you had the chance.’ Her voice was different. Not hard, but without sympathy. As if she’d already left.

‘I so wish I had.’

‘You need help, Laura. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the one to help you.’

Laura put her hand on Rachel’s arm. Her tears welled up again.

‘Please, Rachel. Don’t go.’

She watched as Rachel got to her feet, pulled the rucksack onto her back and walked resolutely up the path, out of her life.

The flat greeted her with its familiar melancholy air. It needed laughter, visitors, cheerful conversation, a bright spray of flowers on the table. Instead there was the same jumble of tatty furniture and the same exhausted clatter of the fridge. Voices echoed along the stairwell. Harsh, unforgiving voices.

A chill went through her. She was alone. Rachel wouldn’t come back. There was only her brother left, in Bristol, who might as well be light-years away, and her mother.

Laura took the bottle of Jack Daniels from the kitchen cupboard. She drank without bothering to pour it into a glass, and drank some more. A fiery sensation grew inside her. She thought about how Rachel had judged her then abandoned her. Shame mingled with horror and then anger. How dare Rachel do that to her?

She stripped and stood naked in front of the wardrobe mirror. Her body was firm and slim, rounded in the right places. She ran her fingers down between her breasts, smiling at her reflection. She was young and sexy. Men looked at her with longing in their eyes – on the Tube and when she walked past in the street – even when she wore a scruffy T-shirt and jeans with no make-up. If she were at the club right now, she’d let some guy fuck her. To hell with Rachel. She didn’t need a friend like that.

I’m going downhill, she thought the next moment. Rachel’s right. If I don’t get away from the club soon, it’ll be too late.

She awoke in the middle of the night, clutching the sheets, sweat drenching her skin. Her heart struck her chest in a volley of irregular thuds like it was being whirled around in a washing machine. Was this a heart attack?

She sat up and turned on the bedside light. Slowly, her body returned to normal. She drank some water and lay down, trying to rid the images from her mind.

It was him again. Her father. For the last time, he was coming to get her.