Peter May - Runaway

‘But he still wanted you.’

‘Oh yes. But he didn’t just want me. He wanted to possess me. I was his trophy bird. He’d fly off in a jealous rage if anyone so much as looked at me. He wouldn’t let me out on my own. I always had to be with him, or left behind at the flat. It was a nightmare. And it was pointless trying to make a difference, clean up the place, build the nest. He would only come and shit in it again.’

All of her tension had returned, and I could feel her body shaking, as if she were shivering from the cold. I tried to draw her closer to me under the coat, but she pulled away and stood up, her face glowing red for a moment as she dragged on her cigarette.

‘There’s got to be a loo in here somewhere.’

‘I doubt if there’ll be running water,’ I said.

But all she said was, ‘I’ll go see if I can find it.’

I watched the faintest shadow she cast soaked up by the dark, and heard the shuffle of her footsteps as she moved away across the waiting room. A door scraped open, and she disappeared off into the station house.

Silence returned, except for the communal breathing of the sleeping runaways. I thought briefly that I heard voices somewhere in the distance, and the revving of an engine. I listened hard. But it’s amazing how invasive and deafening silence can be. Whatever I thought I had heard, I didn’t hear it again.

It was impossible to know how long I waited for Rachel to return. I might even have drifted off again, just for a moment. But in the end I began to worry.

I got stiffly to my feet and stretched aching limbs, listening in the dark to see if I had disturbed any of the others before tiptoeing across the waiting room to find the door that she had opened. I almost bumped into it, and felt my way into what must once have been the original stationmaster’s house. It was pitch in here, as if someone had placed a soft, black blindfold over my eyes. I felt my way around the walls until I found another open door, and as I stepped out into a narrow hallway my eyes immediately detected light. The faintest flickering line of it, coming from under a door at the end of the hall. The air seemed infused with a strange, sweet, vinegary smell, cloying, and it caught in my throat. For just a moment my confusion was disorientating, before sudden realization dawned on me.

I strode down the hall and threw open the door. The small toilet was filled with the yellow light of a candle whose flame dipped and dived in the sudden movement of air. She had already cooked her heroin in a small round metal container and was drawing it up into her syringe through a cotton filter. A half-empty sachet of white powder was set on the lid of the toilet seat, next to some burned tinfoil and a cotton swab. The case that she used to carry her gear lay open beside it.

She had removed her jacket and rolled back her sleeve, a length of black rubber tubing already tied around her upper arm.

Her head whipped round in surprise, dark eyes full of fear and need and deceit.

‘You fool!’ My voice thundered in the confined space, and I swept all the paraphernalia of her habit off the toilet seat. I grabbed the syringe and threw it on the floor, stamping on it until it was shattered and useless, and tipped her cooked H into the dust.

The sound of her scream erupted even before the echo of my voice had died, and she flew at me in a rage. I felt the force of flailing fists hammering at my face and my chest. I tried, and failed, to catch her wrists, and in the end simply threw my arms around her and pulled her hard against me so that she had no room to move. She fought and kicked and shouted, and I heard the footsteps of the others running through the station, voices raised and calling our names.

By the time they reached us, Rachel was reduced to a sobbing wreck, still held firmly against me, but no longer fighting it. Maurie’s face in the doorway flickered pale in the candlelight, eyes wide. The faces of the others pressed in around him. I nodded towards the floor, the shattered syringe, the scattered paraphernalia of a user’s habit, and I saw his eyes close in despair. When they lifted again to meet mine I saw the question in them. What could he do?

My almost imperceptible shake of the head said there was nothing. I saw Luke’s hand on his shoulder, pulling him away, and the four of them were absorbed into darkness.

I held Rachel like that for a long time, feeling her tremble almost uncontrollably.

Then her voice came, sobbing and muffled. ‘I don’t want to take it. I don’t. But you have no idea how bad it feels when I can’t.’

‘It’ll pass,’ I said, and immediately felt her push against me.

Her face turned up, eyes burning with anger. ‘How would you know? What would you know about any of this? I hate you!’

And still I held her. ‘I’ll help you.’

‘How?’

‘I’ll help you get through it.’

‘There is no getting through it, there’s only hell.’

‘Then I’ll go to hell with you!’ I shouted at her. ‘But I’ll bring you back again.’

She swallowed hard and stared at me, eyes filled with many emotions. Confusion, pain, distrust. And something else. Something almost animal. And suddenly her face rose to meet mine. Mouth against mouth. A kiss so full of primal passion that I swear I very nearly lost consciousness. Her tongue forced its way past my teeth, then she bit my lower lip and sucked it into her mouth before just as suddenly she broke away. And we both stood breathless, staring at each other. I still wasn’t sure if what she felt was loathing or lust.

But that was the first time that Rachel and I kissed, and it is a moment I will take with me to the grave.

She spent most of the remaining hours we passed in that place coiled around me like a limpet beneath my coat, sometimes shivering violently, and at other times just trembling. She was frequently in tears, and I had no real idea of what kind of pain she was going through.

Once, she untangled herself from me to go out on to the platform and I heard her throwing up. I went out after her, and found her standing right on the edge of it, arms wrapped around herself for warmth, shaking uncontrollably. The rain had stopped, and the sky above was broken now, moonlight flashing through silver-edged clouds in fits and starts. But it was cold, and in the colourless moonlight she had the bloodless face of a ghost. I put my arms around her and enveloped her in my coat, lending her my warmth to try to stop the shivering.

‘What does it feel like?’ I whispered. ‘What does it give you that makes you keep coming back?’

For a long time she was silent, and I didn’t know if she was thinking about it or just ignoring me.

Then in a tiny voice she said, ‘Oblivion. It takes you down to a place where nothing else matters, Jack. Feels so good, like an end to pain.’ A pause. ‘But when you come back up the pain’s still there, just waiting for you. The world seems even shittier than before, and you can’t wait to escape from it again.’

I tried to imagine what that must be like. And I said, ‘I guess life’s really all about pain, isn’t it? That’s what feeling is. Any feeling. Even good feelings can be painful in their own way. And pain, pure pain, is just the most heightened feeling of all.’ I felt her head lift, and looked down to see her big brown eyes staring up at me. I chuckled. ‘Never knew I was a philosopher, did you? Neither did I.’

A smile brought a little animation back to her face.

‘If you don’t feel anything, Raitch, you might as well be dead. I don’t pretend to know what a heroin high is like, and I never want to. But what you describe seems to me like dying a little. I’d rather be alive and deal with the pain.’