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

I moved the car into a lane towards Wandsworth Bridge.

‘So,’ she said. ‘I get home last Tuesday – you’re still gone, so I’m still heartbroken – and the bitch with the ADHD kid has stole all our pasta so there’s nothing to eat except fucking instant coffee and I’m about to have a full-on breakdown – and then Sandra comes in and she says I’ve got some post, and its an envelope just saying ‘For Dawn’ on it – with a key inside. It’s a car key. And Sandra’s being so fucking nosey but she’s saying she can give me some rice so I’m humouring her and I’m chatting to her about Kimber and about how I met him down the Rockway a week earlier, and I’m saying you’re sulking cos I’ve met a new man – and how he’s very attentive to me – and how I fell asleep at his flat and that’s what made you jealous, weren’t it? But what I didn’t tell you was that his flat is fucking fancy so I knew he’s got money – and I didn’t even fuck him, and the next day I see him again after you’re gone and then the next day again and then I’m seeing him every day like we’re teenagers. I was saying to her, I was saying it was overwhelming, but it was something that he needed and that I needed, and it felt like very child-like, it was just nice, you know? Until there’s a night when he has to go to work, so I come back and you’re still gone, and then here’s this car key in our kitchen, and I’m thinking this can’t be him, but who else’s it going to be? So I just go into the street and Sandra’s behind me and I press the car-key button and this fucking white beauty flashes at us across the road. And it’s got petrol! And there’s this phone inside with a text from him saying ‘happy new year’, even though it’s autumn. Like, what the fuck?’

‘He sounds like a serial killer,’ I said. ‘What does he expect in return?’

‘Don’t you get bored being this cynical? It’s a gift. It’s love. He knows we’re stuck in a hostel – I told him I got a son, and I gave you a fucking five-star review sweetheart, even though you’re a little shit – and he speaks fancier than you and he’s attracted to me, so fuck you. Life is about to happen to us!’

‘Why do you keep saying that? You sound like a televangelist.’

Sunlight flashed from the Thames as we crossed it. Ahead of us rose the advert sculpture of Wandsworth Bridge roundabout – a model atom with electron paths of white steel and four billboards for a nucleus – a microcosm of all London now, perhaps – the nucleus sold for the sign.

‘So fucking what?’ she said. ‘It’s my motto now. And it’s true. You’re torturing me with this negativity! It’s not civilised!’

I imagined swerving into an oncoming car so that it crashed into Dawn’s door. Our soundtrack climaxed in a fanfare. She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

‘Everyone knows civilisation comes from torture,’ I said, with the sun still in my eyes. ‘Millions of bodies maimed and broken. Cruelty is the agent of progress. Perhaps it didn’t need to be, but it was. Think of all the different kinds of labour, in war, in slavery, in revolution – in industry and agriculture – over the last three hundred years, or the last three thousand years, it doesn’t matter – from the mines of the bronze age to the skyscrapers now – temples, railways, harvests, factories – they were all worked on by bodies under torture, minds reduced to screams… Just so a few men, in comfort, could speak about iambic pentameter and the speed of light.’

‘Where’d that come from?’ she laughed, swigging from the bottle.

The traffic lights ahead went red. Thoughtlessly, I pressed on the accelerator. The sound of a flag flapped around my ears, as the wind sped up – and my muscles turned to gold – and then a trumpet blast, a punch – and the car was shunted sideways.

I snapped into my seatbelt, as metal hands clapped once beside me. There was a wail. But I drove on – into the wind, uphill, as the city split open and a sea spilled out of me – and in the mirror, the car that had hit us continued behind us, a little blackened – and the trumpets changed.

The sky was the hull of a ship – a whaler with sails of living lions – and as the lions roared, gems fell from their mouths, mingling with flowers – carnations and carbuncles – in a wave of red that washed over the car.

Dawn, dazed, lifted the bottle to her lips, and drank – though most of the wine had spilled out over her. Then she turned to me, slowly, in wonder – with a mask of blood on the far half of her head. I wanted to scream out of the window, ‘Nobody’s strong enough to be loved by me!’ But I laughed instead.

For a second, London seemed an unknown city – and I braked with my eyes closed, offering myself to the sun.

Dawn drank again from the bottle, still stiff with shock. The blood dribbled like sweat from her hairline, where it had hit the edge of the door – and I looked at it like it was mine, more than my own blood was mine – or rather, I looked at her wound like it was mine in the same way that the wounds on my back were hers.

‘What’s happening?’ she whispered.

‘We’re going to our new house,’ I said.

‘Oi, how d’you guess that?’ she asked, disorientated, dabbing at her cut in disbelief.

‘You just told me,’ I said.

‘Oh, yeah, ok yeah – he’s got us somewhere to live, Kimber’s got us… it’s not a council flat, but we knew that dream weren’t coming true, sweetheart, this is as good as it’s going to get, it’s…’ She was speaking too quickly to keep up with herself. ‘It’s fucking good – we just need a… a five hundred pound deposit – and that’s insanely small, you got to admit, he’s in love with me – and then the contract’s legit, then, then, then that shows the contract’s legit.’

‘So we’re putting our entire lives in the hands of some guy you met a week ago?’

‘You want to be in a fucking homeless hostel forever?’ she shouted, at last reacting to the crash with anger. ‘It’s been two years, Leander! I can’t live like that anymore – and you weren’t even living.’

‘I could have found a —’

‘We’ve been fucking trying! You found us fuck all. Being pretty made you lazy, I told you – you’re stuck, and I don’t want you fucking stuck. I love you, alright?’ She was anxiously smearing her own blood across her face. ‘I done us a good thing, sweetheart, admit it – I got us out that fucking misery nest. Don’t try and get outraged at me, it’s too late, I signed the contract. It’s done.’

‘Ok, ok,’ I smiled, and drove on. ‘Ok. I can pay the deposit. I’ll give you the five hundred.’

‘Baby!’ Nearly weeping, she kissed me on the cheek, forcing an arm behind my back to wrap me in a hug, pressing her bleeding head into mine – aroused by the intensity of our shared shock. ‘Fuck,’ she said, as she shrank back in her seat. ‘Fuck… That cunt drove into us.’

‘He wasn’t looking,’ I said, knowing she hadn’t seen the traffic lights change.

She peered out of the open window, dripping blood onto her door. ‘He dented us!’ she shrieked. ‘That fucking cunt. My new fucking car. Fuck! Your fucking squirrel – I told you that was an omen. I fucking told you. Cunt!’ She fell back. ‘But still it didn’t get us good enough, did it? We’re still alive. Didn’t fucking work.’ She cackled. ‘Actually can I have six hundred pound please? For dinner as well.’

She reached distractedly into my tracksuit pocket and took out the stack. ‘All fifties! I love it.’ She counted. ‘This is only five hundred though? You said eight hundred.’

‘Wait.’ I took my right hand off the wheel and dug into my pocket, careful to take out only six more notes. ‘You can’t have all of it.’