Jonathan Lyon - Carnivore - The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017

‘Life is about to happen to us babyboyyy

Ring me cunt

This is yr mother btw

Luvvvv u’

These texts were from an unknown number, which I saved in my contacts as ‘Dawn, Mother Errant’ before ringing back.

‘You fucking done yet?’ she shouted. ‘I told you he was easy. He was easy weren’t he? I’m coming where you are. Wait – where the fuck are you again? You’re at the Waire, yeah?’

‘What? Yeah. How are you coming to me? Are you drunk?’

‘Shut up. I’m amazing,’ she laughed. ‘I’m a woman of the world again. I’m a fucking miracle! I told you I still have my ways, don’t I? I’m a goddess! Give me your perjury!’

‘Perjury? What you talking about? Are you in a car?’

‘Perjury, homage, whatever it’s called. Gifts for goddesses. You know what I mean. And fuck yeah I’m in a car. The fastest car in the Milky Way, sweetheart, you’ve got a chauffeur today. I’m nearly there so don’t move. Don’t you move! You can’t run off from me now anyway. It’s got the worst art you ever seen, don’t it? I told you.’

‘You mean like a religious offering?’ I asked, trying to address the first of her non-sequiturs.

The lobby I was passing through was indeed decorated with bland attempts at pop art, which, despite their garish colours, somehow all seemed beige.

‘No it’s a fancier word than that, you fuckwit. One of your posh words. I only want your poshest words. The fanciest fucking words you’ve got, for the fanciest woman you know.’

‘A libation?’

‘That’s the fucking one, beautiful!’ she said. ‘You’re a gorgeous boy! Libation, invective, perjury – you know the words – only give me the good shit now.’

‘How did you get a car?’

‘No spoilers, bitch, you’re waiting for me. Don’t move!’ She hung up.

I stepped onto the pavement. Kensington was tensing itself for rush hour. Bicycles flirted past wing-mirrors towards the calmer cobbled side streets. The clouds above us were tensed too, as if plotting violence against the autumn.

London seemed to grow out of its weather, not out of the ground – the mood came first and then the body – and this mood followed the whims of the surrounding sea, which was as changeable as a child – and had a child’s fury and a child’s persistence.

In a precaution I’d been taught by Dawn, I redistributed the stack of fifties across my two pockets, my boxers-briefs, and my right sock. The pain dizzied me pleasantly. And as I replaced my shoe, a white car drove up beside me – blasting one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos through an open window.

‘Oi, your highness!’ Dawn shouted. ‘Get the fuck in, we’re going to the guillotine!’

‘Have you had your hair done?’ I asked, getting in.

It had been dyed the colour of honeycomb, and her skin seemed to have been pulled tighter over her face too – so that it was sharp and handsome in an untrusting way. She wore a black leather jacket over a black lace dress, on a petite frame thinned by years of addiction.

‘I done everything. I look like a hundred years younger, don’t I? I don’t even remember what age is after thirty-four. I shaved my legs above the knee. I’m even wearing heels.’

‘You’re not,’ I said, and tried to bend to see her feet under the dashboard, but she pushed my head away.

‘Maybe I’m not wearing heels, you cheeky shit, you’re not allowed to check. A woman is wearing heels if she tells you she’s wearing heels. Wait, what’s wrong with you?’

‘Just drive.’

‘You’re flinching, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you sit right? What he do?’

‘What? Nothing, it was fine.’

I adopted a tone of alluring evasion – to make her think that I wanted her to ask further, and was only pretending to be brave – since I played the lost boy for her just as much as I did for the clients she sometimes sent my way. This was partly because I took pleasure in manipulating for its own sake – and partly because it was the role Dawn wanted me to play anyway – as it let her be a more caring, protective mother to me, and so let her atone for failing her other son, from whom she was estranged.

She turned off the radio and gripped my wrist.

‘You’re telling me this fucking minute what just happened up there.’

‘I’m fine. He. I’m fine.’

Still gripping my wrist, she unzipped my tracksuit top. I twitched at her touch. She pulled the jacket over my shoulder, exposing the edge of a welt from the tongue of the belt.

‘What the fuck?’ She pushed me forwards to pull it down further, exposing the rest of his lashes.

I pretended to shiver, carefully, so as not to overplay it – and didn’t reply. I wanted her mind to spread multiple narratives across my silence.

‘Why’d he do this? That was never his game.’

‘It’s his game now,’ I said, attempting a half-laugh.

‘Fuck, babe, how’d I let this happen?’

But there was something so insincere about the way she said this that I began to wonder whether she was role-playing too. Dawn was as clever and as bored as me, after all – her other son refused to see her for a reason. Maybe she’d known her client would whip me, and wanted him to. He had acted as though it had been pre-arranged. Maybe she was playing a new game with me, then, a violent game – born of love and cruelty and love of cruelty, and love of games themselves – and in it we had to hurt each other, using people as our instruments. Or maybe I was being paranoid.

‘This had nothing to do with you, it’s not about you,’ I said, now hopeful that the opposite of this was true.

‘You need Savlon. It’s ok I’ve got Savlon in my bag – mummy can get you some painkillers – oh shit, you need some painkilling, I was wondering why you weren’t sitting right – look at you!’ There was no sympathy in her voice. ‘This is fucked up. How was you even standing out there? Who uses the belt end? You’re bleeding! Fuck. Lean over, let me fix this.’

‘Can we drive somewhere else first?’

‘No, lean over.’

She reached behind her seat for her handbag, rummaged awhile, and found the antiseptic cream. Her fingers drew its ointment across my wounds with a tenderness that seemed almost admiring of – or excited by – the violence she’d arranged for me.

‘Fuck men, fuck men, fuck men like that,’ she said, enjoying her own performance. ‘He better of given you extra for this. What the fuck? How much you get?’

‘Eight hundred.’

‘What? No! It was supposed to be a grand.’

‘No, it was supposed to be five hundred. Then he gave me a three hundred pound tip for this.’

‘Oh my god, baby, this is not how we start our new life. Life is about to happen to us, I’ve been telling you, we’ve got to be looking our best. Thank fuck he didn’t touch your beautiful face! You been crying?’

She kissed my shoulder. I shrugged her off and pulled my top back up. I wanted to believe she’d had me wounded on purpose. And if this was a game, then it was my turn to play.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Some painkilling would be good if we can get some though.’

‘Course we can darling, I’ve got you. I got you. We’re going to do something fun.’ Bored of her fake dismay, she’d become enthusiastic again. She jerked the car forward, away from the main road, towards the backstreets. ‘Mummy’s going to give you a driving lesson. We got to act like rich people now. So we got to drive where they drive. And I’ve got so much to say, you’ve been gone so fucking long.’

‘It’s been like ten days.’

‘Yeah and I made some changes. Cos I —’

There was a smack on the windscreen – we flinched. A bleeding lump rolled down the glass and slumped onto the bonnet. We peered forwards. It was an injured squirrel, perhaps fallen from a tree. It lay on its back, twitching, trying to right itself – as something black dived upon it: a crow as a big as a cat. The crow drove its beak into the squirrel’s skull. Dawn looked away. Between thrusts, the crow rotated its head to survey its surroundings – and eventually made eye contact with me. It knew it was being watched, but did not fear this audience. I smiled in encouragement. The crow hammered the squirrel into a mess of sinew, but ate nothing – seemingly intent only on the kill. And then it flew away.