Jon McGregor - Even the Dogs

Thought about doing it by deliberately going over, like most of the users he knows have thought about that, thinking about it half the time they shoot up. Thought about jumping, hanging, drowning, burning, walking into the wrong pub and getting himself stabbed. One thing he always came back to though was walking out in front of a bus. Kid at school done that and it had always stuck with him. Seemed like if you got it right it would be easy and quick and no one would ever know you’d done it on purpose, like if any of that God stuff turned out to be true like his parents said then you could maybe get away with it not looking too much like a mortal sin and all that.

He has thought about it. He has.

But all Robert’s bruises don’t count for much. Everyone’s got them, after all. All of us. Bruises and the rest of it: cuts and grazes and sprains and breaks, abscesses and open infected sores. From digging, from falling, from walking into a fist or a bottle or a boot. Like Ben especially, short time we’ve known him he’s more or less always had a black eye or something like it, his smart little mouth always earning him trouble but he never seems to mind. Always a big grin on when he takes the punch, laughing like Is that all you’ve got. Which usually gets him one more. Like Laura, second time she came back to her dad’s we knew she was ready to stay around by the bruises she had. Up and down both arms and her fingernails weren’t long or clean or polished no more. Never talked much about where she’d been but it didn’t look like she’d gone back home to her mum’s.

Said she’d gone off with some friends instead of going home. Spent the summer at some festivals, like climbing over fences and sleeping in other people’s tents and selling pills to pay for food, and at the end of the summer she still didn’t want to go home so she ended up living on a site for the winter. This was what she told Heather. What Heather tells us now, her voice hanging above us like smoke and lingering in the cold white room. She’d done the same round of festivals the next year, and ended up on another site for the winter, and basically got in to gear while she was staying there. It had been all right for a while but then it had all gone a bit dark so she’d sold her van and left the site. Come back up to her dad’s to get herself sorted. Heather asked her if she meant sort of sorted clean or sorted sorted, and Laura said what did she think otherwise what would she be doing there?

The two of them in the front bedroom together, Laura’s old room although she could hardly recognise it now, the two of them shooting up and sending someone out to score and shooting up again, and then Heather getting her started on the crack. She still had a wedge of money from selling the van, and the two of them soon binged their way through it. Heather showing her how to inject into her legs. Looking at her arms, stroking the blackening bruises and saying You’ve messed these up proper sweetheart you better leave them alone now. Pulling Laura’s trousers down and kneeling on the floor beside her to find a good new vein, whispering sweetly while Laura brought it up and dug in the pin. Saying There you go love, that should do you nicely. Handing her a tissue to press on the spot where the needle had gone in before helping her pull up her trousers as she lay back down on the bed. Always made a point of leaning the door shut because she said she didn’t think Robert should see but really she didn’t want anyone to see. But we see now. The two of them lying on the bed together, touching each other’s hair, nodding out for minutes and hours and then opening their eyes to talk. Laura saying How long you been doing this then, and Heather saying Too fucking long love but what does it matter. Laura saying Do you think my dad knows I’m using and Heather saying He might be pissed love but he’s not stupid of course he knows. I think he’s just happy to have you about the place. Which made Laura smile. Any parent would be, Heather said. Which made Laura smile even more. Resting the side of her face on her pressed-together hands, saying If my mum could see me now she’d go mental, she’d go totally get-out-of-my-house, that’s why I came back here, I reckoned like my dad at least couldn’t say much about it the state he’s in. Looking at Heather’s tattoo, the blue-green ink blurred by the ageing skin, pressing her fingers over it and saying Can you see me now? The two of them laughing. Heather saying The trouble that’s got me into I reckon I should sue whoever done it. Like sort of loss of earnings. The two of them laughing, and all of us laughing now in this room at the thought of it, the sound of us still not quite making sense as we stand here around Robert’s naked bloated body.

Remember the way Heather always laughed, a bit louder and a bit longer than everyone else, like it took her a while to get the joke and she had to make up for it.

Laura sliding on to the floor to get the works, already wriggling her trousers down and saying Heather do you want some more I want some more. Ben knocking on the door, moving it aside, looking down at Laura with her trousers around her knees and saying All right ladies I got your shopping. That grin on his face, spread right across his cheeks, his lips rolling round his teeth, trying not to look so pleased with himself, with his dark hair curling over his face and his hands reaching into his pockets to pull out the goods like a magic trick. Like some kind of showman, weren’t he. How old was he then. Sixteen. Only just out of care, officially. Got himself out a long time before but he was still getting used to not looking over his shoulder all the time, to not worrying about getting caught and taken back. Was starting to miss it already in fact. The two of them reaching out and him teasing them for a moment, waving the gear above them, enjoying the passing thrill of power before dropping it into their outstretched hands. That was early on. When he would do missions for nothing, for fun and thanks and a bag or two he could keep to sell on himself. Was a lot of things he’d do for a word of thanks, then. The way it would light up his face.

Ben always had a lot to say but he never told us much. Always talking about going down to Brighton to find his sister. Said the last he’d heard she was staying down there, and if things didn’t work out he could always go and track her down. Lost touch with her after she left care, she was supposed to come and visit but she didn’t always make it. Didn’t even get on with her that well, never had much to do with her after they got taken into care. But she’s still his sister and that, she’d still help him out, probably. If he could get down to Brighton. If he could find her. She knows how it weren’t his fault. She knows that’s old news now. He couldn’t have done nothing to stop him, to stop it happening. He didn’t even know about it really, not enough to be sure. She took it out on Ben at the time but that’s old news now, she wouldn’t keep taking it out on him no more. If he could get down to Brighton. If he could find her. What would he have done anyway. He was only little. At the time when it happened. Anyway. Don’t matter no more. Sweeping the hair out of his eyes. Bouncing up and down on his toes and looking all over, like he was getting ready to run. Always seemed like he was ready to run. Didn’t he. Remember that. Don’t you. Jesus.

The doctor moves over to the whiteboard and talks to his junior, asking if he’s happy with their observations so far, if he has any further comments, and then he speaks to the woman with the black-rimmed glasses and says Okay, Jenny, I think it’s time we had a proper look at our gentleman, could you do us the honour of opening him up? We see, through a window in one wall which looks on to a small office, the detective talking on his phone, drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup and watching as Jenny takes a long scalpel from a steel tray of tools and slices into Robert’s chest. There’s a soft slow hissing sound as his chest and stomach deflate. The polished blade parts a long u-shaped line through his flesh, from one ear to his chest and then back to the other ear, the blood running in streams down each side of his body. She keeps cutting, and the blood keeps coming, thick and dark and draining away along the gullies in the sides of the table. She lifts the scalpel and makes another long cut, from the centre of the chest right down to the pubic bone, and then she peels back the flaps of tissue and skin, tugging them away from Robert’s ribcage and laying them out flat on either side of his chest like the opened pages of a book. She peels away the third flap, at the top, draping it over Robert’s face, and uses an electric saw to cut through each of his ribs. The noise of the saw fills the room, grinding and violent, and we step back for a moment. We turn away. This is difficult to watch, even now. How easily a body is reduced to this. Knotted sinew and fat and bone. Severed arteries and veins, the blood pouring out. The saw whines a little as it bites into each rib, the technician rocking on her toes as the blade breaks through the soft marrow and out the other side. She cuts through twelve ribs along his left side, stooping low over the table, and then circles round to cut through twelve more on the right. The saw whirrs to a noisy halt. The extraction fans in the table whistle softly as they suck the bone dust out of the air.