Paul Cornell - London Falling

She looked him in the eye. ‘It wasn’t a suicide,’ she said again.

She left it at that and walked back to sit beside her terrified mother.

Rob caught her on the landing, during the wake. It was an expensive affair, with an Irish folk band, and everyone from Bermondsey and beyond coming in to pay their respects. It was an all-day drinking binge, and Lisa had intended to spend most of it in what had become her room now that Rob had insisted her mother move into what had become the new home and headquarters of the firm. Her dad’s house had been sold.

His outstretched palm slapped onto the wallpaper just by her face. There was the continuous roar of the party below, but here they were alone. He carried a glass of whisky, but hadn’t drunk from it.

She looked carefully back at him.

‘Alfred,’ he said, ‘wouldn’t have wanted you doing this.’

‘Yes, he-’

‘Shut up. Just for once. . Oh, no!’ He grabbed her as she shifted, swung her against the wall, and stuck his knuckles into her throat. He put the glass down on the top rail of the stairs. ‘Alf and Maureen always kept you apart from the details. Even though, by the end, there wasn’t fucking much to keep you from. Apart maybe from any one of the big bastards who might have come after us. But now we’re safe. Now we have a chance to make this better. Now we’re going to grow. And you’re part of this family, so you’re part of that, too.’

She shook her head, pulled herself away from him.

He punched her in the stomach.

He hauled her upright while she was still coughing.

‘From now on you will be silent, and you will be polite, and you will do what you’re told. And you will shut up about my brother’s suicide .’

She slid down the wall as he retrieved his whisky. She couldn’t remain silent, looking at his face, because she knew for certain now. She was brave in the way only a teenager could be. Brave and stupid and immortal: she knew all those things about herself. And still she said it, ‘What if I don’t?’

He looked hard at her, and she was ready for him to attack her again. But then that hard look became calculating, as if a new idea had occurred to him. ‘Then you’ll see,’ he said. ‘You’ll be the first to see.’

She’d half expected him to come back that night — to come back later, when he was drunk. So she built a mountain of furniture against her bedroom door. Stupid teenage reaction. She felt a terrible weight attached to that word now. She had to behave older now. For Dad. To make things right about Dad. Her lace gloves and shawls and the make-up had become her special thing, her way of protesting within the family, so that the very sight of her would remind them.

She stepped back from the mountain she’d built, wondering what sort of ‘older’ she had to be now, asking herself what she could actually do.

She went to bed thinking about it. She fell asleep. And then, sometime in the early hours, she was awake again. Or she thought she was. An extraordinary smell had suffused the room. It smelt like some kind of memory. Like old books and spilled beer and dead flowers left in churches.

Someone was standing at the end of the bed. ‘There she is,’ said a high, strange voice, ‘the disobedient child.’

She tried to react, tried to cry out or slam herself back against the wall, but the woman made a simple gesture, and she found she couldn’t. She could only look at what was in front of her. The woman looked as if she’d been cut out of the picture Lisa was seeing through her eyes, then stuck back awkwardly into the same space again. There seemed to be special effects around her. The room behind her looked oddly unreal, as if it was just a photograph.

The woman remained in shadow. But she had in her hands held in front of her. . a copy of a London telephone directory.

Lisa tried to move but she couldn’t. If she tried really hard. . her hand moved really slowly. . and the woman was coming towards her in a blur.

She smacked Lisa across the face with the telephone directory — so fast it was like a bat on a ball. The back of Lisa’s head hit the wall.

She collapsed, oh so slowly, forward, the blood bursting from her newly broken nose. Her head was ringing, slowly; she was feeling different to any way she’d ever felt before. To be hit that hard; it felt it could change her. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to even suck in a breath-

The woman hit her again, as her head was sagging, and the blow was just as hard.

Lisa fell in and out of consciousness during the next half-hour, but her body never fell and she never managed to make a sound.

She woke again, her vision a blur, to find the woman standing at a distance again. ‘This is your master’s mercy,’ she said, ‘so be thankful.’

And then she left. Right through the wall.

Lisa found that she could make noises now. So she did. But nobody came. She’d locked herself in her room. So that couldn’t have happened. She finally fell over on one side.

The bruises had almost faded by the next morning. It hurt her to move, but there wasn’t a lot to show anyone. Her nose was at an angle, and it hurt to touch it, but somehow it had already set.

Lisa stared into the bathroom mirror. It was as if she’d done this damage to herself.

She started to sob, leaning on the sink and giving way to it, but then she remembered her dad’s face again, and how it looked as if he’d done it to himself too, and she made this about him again, and she heaved herself upright, though it hurt like hell, and through her loosened teeth she turned the sobs into a roar.

Mum never saw anything that could have convinced her. So Lisa didn’t even try. Mum remained silent at all meals where Lisa was around. Rob kept his distance for a few days, but when he finally looked at her, he looked interrogatively. Lesson learned?

Lisa put away her very particular type of fashions and make-up and music.

For the next three years, she was silent but she was polite. She wore very clean jeans; a crisp shirt; the hair that the hairdresser suggested, every time. She looked just like ‘a teenager’ in a soap opera.

When she started to think about that terrible night, she thought about Dad instead. To the point where she wasn’t sure how it could ever have happened. How something impossible could have happened. It wasn’t supported by anything in her everyday world. Sometimes she wondered if it was a story she’d written, or if she’d dreamed it. But what had happened to Dad was real. At least she hung on to that.

She made sure her mother never got worried. She hid the allergies she now developed to everything existing in the family home, her eyes streaming at the smell of that carpet, at the polish, even at the air in her own bedroom. She threw back one-a-day antihistamines six times a day.

She had her mantra.

It wasn’t a suicide.

Nine GCSEs: seven As and two Bs. She met older blokes through the family, and lost her virginity to one of Rob’s soldiers after a party. Afterwards, sore and curled up into a little ball, she goaded him with what her mum could make Rob do to him, if she found out. He was having a punt, wasn’t he? Thought she was a bit of a tart, didn’t he? She got him out of there in five minutes.

They planned a big party for her sixteenth birthday. Lisa Toshack let them.

Now Rob would ruffle her hair whenever he passed. His organization had grown at high speed since Alf’s death. In consequence everyone was dressing better. From the distance of history, it now looked as if a weak man had been holding them all back. Mum found a new man, one of Rob’s lieutenants, and he was decent enough, neutral to Lisa. She could feel the prohibitions issued about her, the threats said in her name, the anticipation of her future somewhere in the bookkeeping of the organization. They had even decided on her A levels: statistics, computers, finance.