Emma Unsworth - Animals

‘Look, I made a mistake because I am a human being. It hasn’t happened since and it won’t happen again.’

‘A “mistake”? You didn’t use an apostrophe incorrectly or get on the wrong bus, Jim. You fucked someone else.’

‘I didn’t fuck her.’

‘ONLY BECAUSE YOU CAN’T PLAY SNOOKER WITH A ROPE.’

Someone came down the steps, looked at us and jogged across the street to the newsagents.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Jim said. ‘This is my career.’

3.46 a.m.

I wandered the streets for many hours. In my head I performed several staircase soliloquies and fantasy action scenes. I burst from the toilet cubicle with a gun and shot Kirsten just to watch her die — shot her friend, too. During the speeches I threw my drink sideways in Jim’s face without changing my expression. I left the party in a blaze of Carrie -like telekinesis, the town hall roaring with fire behind me as I casually lit a fag on a smouldering gargoyle. None of them helped.

When I got to Tyler’s I knocked.

No answer.

I knocked again.

Nada.

I found my key and unlocked the door. Stepped into the hall.

‘Tyler? Ty?’

No sound or light but a meteorological sense of something not right. Rather, something terribly wrong. I turned on the hall light and went through to the lounge.

A lamp was on and a CD was playing. The Faint. Hilarious. Funny what you manage to appreciate even when…

She was on her back in the middle of the rug and there was sick all over her and all over.

TYLER

TYLER

TYLER

TYLER

I shook her by the shoulders — nothing, nothing oh god fuck — and then turned her on her side into my best approximation of the recovery position. Why had I never taken a first-aid course? Why had I never had a job in a coffee shop? She would have known what to do. She would have. I banged her on the back once twice three times in case more sick was in there.

‘TYLER!’

I scooped sick out of her mouth with my fingers, held the back of her head and put my ear close to her mouth, moved my fingers to the side of her neck where the pulse should be. Oh god oh fuck oh please—

Then I felt and heard them, soft, soft — very faint but very there — there was a pulse and she was breathing. Thank all the gods and all the fucks and all the angels and Jesuses. She coughed and retched a long, horrible retch.

‘Tyler, it’s me — what the fuck have you taken?’

I scanned the room. Wine glasses on the table with purple liquid inside. The mandy was gone, wasn’t it?

‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

She shook her head. Coughed again. Retched again. ‘Nawp.’

‘A taxi, then. You’re going to hospital. I’ll clean you up a bit first if that’s what you’re bothered about.’

‘No no no no no.’ She moved her arm and I saw two pieces of paper in her hand, scrunched in her grip. They fell in a flutter as she got onto her elbows, her bottom. Sat up. Brought her fingers to her nose.

‘What did you have?’

She looked down at her chest and grimaced at the sick. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I really do.’

‘I need a bath.’

‘I’ll get a hot cloth and then we’re going to hospital.’

She sniffed hard and rubbed her face. ‘Look, I appreciate the offer but I’m not going so you may as well drop it.’

‘Tyler, we are going—’

‘Listen, they don’t even pump your stomach any more. They just put you on a drip because they’re fucking pussies. Then I’ll have to lie there for hours hydrating until some fucker comes in to lecture me or tries to send me to rehab or some shit when really I’m fine. I just had a bad day.’

I looked at the papers on the floor. ‘What happened?’

She flapped one hand then the other, like she was trying to bat away a fly or not cry on TV.

I looked at the wine glasses on the table. ‘Take it that’s not Vimto?’

‘It’s GHB. Mixed with Vimto.’ She retched as she said it.

Arithmetic assaulted me. Two glasses. One Tyler.

‘Who was here?’

She rubbed her face again. She had no mascara left on her lashes but plenty on her cheeks. Her beauty spot was smeared with lipstick. ‘Nick.’

‘Did he bring the GHB?’

‘Naturally.’

I nodded. Motherfucker.

‘Do you think you can stand?’

‘No promises.’

I helped her. She was very weak, leaning almost all of her weight on me and banging the wall as few times as we walked to the bathroom. I sat her down on the toilet while I ran the bath, took her clothes off and helped her step in. I washed her very slowly and gently.

‘He didn’t hurt you, did he?’

‘You mean did he rape me?’

‘I mean did he anything.’

‘I’m not sore so I don’t think so. It hardly matters, though, does it?’

‘What?’

‘It’d be more like necrophilia than rape. Look at me. My life hasn’t changed in ten years, I work for The Man, I’m covered in fungus, I haven’t got the memory of the Sixties to keep me going and the Nineties feel like some sort of bad in-joke.’

‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat.’

A series of grunts and snorts. I could hear the night in her chest.

‘Come on, piglet, I’ll roast you a pizza.’

I dressed her in my clothes — not that fucking kimono. When the t-shirt, baggy on her, was over her head she pulled it down and held the bottom hem.

‘Do you love me, Lo?’

Sometimes.

‘Tyler, I’d give you my ass and shit through my ribs.’

I put her to bed and went to the shop for food for myself. When I got back she got up and sat next to me on the sofa as I ate pizza (she couldn’t eat). We watched the Olympics. A string of mozzarella dangled from the piece of pizza I was eating. Tyler eyed it warily then looked back at the TV.

‘Who was it?’ she said, still looking at the TV. I put the piece of pizza down. Saliva deluge pre-empting a bathroom dash. On the screen, teenaged girls bounced around, landing and posing. Tyler nodded at the TV. ‘Would you look at the American girls nailing this shit. I want them to flick the bird as they land and yell FUCKYEAH! at the apparatus.’

Sparkling leotards flitted across the screen. A tiny American gymnast started doing a routine on the horse. Halfway through a pike she fell onto the horse and banged herself badly between the legs, falling to the ground in agony.

‘Get up!’ Tyler shouted.

‘She’s hurt, by the look of it.’

‘Get up, you stupid girl.’

‘I think she’s trying.’

‘Don’t you know the rules?’ I shook my head. ‘She has to be back on that horse in ten seconds or she’s disqualified. How whack is that? You’ve just taken a sledgehammer in the puss and you’ve got ten seconds before your whole country hates you.’ She stood up and motioned wildly. ‘GET UP, GIRL, GET UP!’ She sat down again quickly. ‘I feel very nauseous,’ she said. ‘Will you get the vomitarium, just in case?’ She lay back, closed her eyes.

The wine glasses from the previous night were still on the table (they wouldn’t be helping) so I picked them up and as I passed the papers on the floor I picked those up, too. I glanced at them in my hand. There was writing on them. They were letters — one long, one short. I read the short one first, almost walking into the door frame.

T,

They found this when they were clearing your father’s house and forwarded it to me with some other paperwork, so I’m sending it on. I haven’t opened it. It’s up to you whether you open it or not. If you want to talk about it I’m here and I love you.

X Mom

In the kitchen I put the glasses down, almost missing the work surface, and read the longer letter, dated 24th of December 2006.