Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (14 page)

It takes forever to get there. It's so busy, cars and buses on the roads and pedestrians in idiotic costumes on the pavements. They get stuck in a jam on Wellington Road, fuming and cursing the accident up ahead and glaring at the screaming ambulance trying to squeeze down a gap in traffic that doesn't look big enough. Lindsay's got a sick feeling in his guts that it might be Valentine, he might have slammed Olly's people carrier into a lamppost and scattered booster seats and old crisp packets everywhere, but when they finally crawl past it's a screeching middle-aged woman being cut out of a tiny Ka. Even so, it feels like he only starts breathing again when they're turning off Rosslyn Hill and following the last few bends to the Valentines' massive white house. The black car is there, parked crookedly against the kerb, and the relief is staggering.

Through the wrought-iron gate, up the cobbled path, under the dark trees. Lindsay and Olly stand there together on the doorstep like nervous kids on first-date night with the vicar's daughters, eyeing each other uneasily. They can hear voices in the living room seeping out of the open window, but the heavy curtains are closed.

Olly rings the bell. The voices stop for a second then start up again. Valentine is yelling and cursing now, they hear him shout, "If that's one of them they can go and die in a fire!" moments before the hall light flicks on and there's the fumbling sound of chains and locks. Valentine senior opens the door and gives them both such a vicious mean look Lindsay almost want to laugh.

"What?"

 

"Trick or treat?" Olly says tentatively. Phil curls his upper lip like he's smelling something bad.

 

"You look a fucking state, son, you're as bad as him indoors. You wanna sort your life out."

Olly ignores it. He probably gets it a lot, Lindsay realises with something that's almost like sympathy, even though what Valentine's dad just said is totally true. "Is Pip in?"

"NO!" Valentine shouts from the other room. Lindsay sighs and leans against the wall, punching a text message in and pressing send while the other two bicker like women.

"Can you just tell him I wanna see him, please?"

"He knows you're here, he don't wanna come out. What you done, anyway? And you," he adds, turning on Lindsay. "What you done to him to make him come stamping in here like a raging fucking bull?"

"
I've
done nothing.
Your son
just can't seem to decide who he wants to sleep with, that's all."

"Lindsay!" Olly gasps, so melodramatically it's like he's doing it for a joke when he's really not, he's just as much of a drama queen as Valentine. Valentine must get the text at that exact second because that's when his tantrum properly kicks off.

"Oh my god he's such a fucking
cunt
sometimes, I ain't going out there, they can both fucking
rot in a pit
for all I care, they ruin my
life
."

"What did you say?" Phil demands. "None of your business."

"He told me to grow up," Valentine shouts from the other room. Phil doesn't say anything but he kind of looks like he might agree. "What happened to your face?"

 

"This little thug headbutted me."

 

"Yeah, only cos you slammed me against the wall by my neck and slapped me."

 

"Only because you and Valentine were getting up to it when I was standing
five feet away
."

 

"He's a bloody
vampire
, you mong, he bit me, end of drama!" Olly howls, at the same time as Phil snaps, "He's got a
name
, you know." "He's got
my
name," Lindsay snarls back, and everything's suddenly very quiet.

Then a tiny voice behind them squeals, "Olly!" and Valentine's little sister comes flying up the garden path trailing powdery bandages behind herself. Lindsay watches him stoop to hug her, wincing when her momentum makes her bang her forehead off his, but she doesn't even seem to notice, she's chattering on like a clockwork toy. "Me and Rishi and Jeffrey and Jeremy done
mummies
!"

"Yeah, babes, I can see."

"And we got Monster Munch and Haribos and Mars bars and Twixies and Magic Stars and jelly worms and cola bottles and flying saucers and I got
two
toffee apples and we ain't even done Downshire Hill yet!" Olly lets her go and she digs through her little plastic pumpkin to find a lollipop to give to him and a jelly worm she holds up for her dad, then she's speeding back to where her friends and some of their mums are waiting by the gate.

"You didn't get a sweet," Olly says smugly. Lindsay puts his hands in his pockets so he doesn't smack the bastard again.
I hate my life and everyone in it
, he wants to say, but instead he takes a deep calming breath and makes himself look at Phil.

"Please could you tell Philip I'm sorry I hit his friend." He grits his teeth saying the next bit, forcing it out and trying to make it sound less grudging than it does in his head because he just knows Valentine is there listening at the living room door and if nothing else works, this is the bait that just might lure him out. "Tell him I love him and I'm going home. If he wants a lift back he's got to come out now."

Not to be outdone, Olly hurriedly butts in with, "Tell him
I'm
sorry I nutted his boyfriend and said he needs a head doctor."

"That ain't even the
point
!" Valentine yells. He slings the door open and shoves his dad out the way to come and face them both down. His stupid platform heels are so high he's almost as tall as Lindsay and it's disconcerting being eye to eye like this. Lindsay feels sort of like he's shrunk, not that Valentine's grown. "
You
," he says, jabbing Lindsay hard in the chest with his forefinger, "are a
fucking jealous cunt
and if you don't trust me after all this time then me and you ain't gonna last very long. I ain't rolling over and taking your shit no more, I don't
need
you no more, I can live without you and it makes me feel a fuckton less crazy when I do so just fucking watch it, alright? I might remind you
I
weren't the one fucking other people's wives at funerals while my boyfriend sat at home feeling like shit. And
you
," he turns on Olly and pokes him in the chest as well, "you don't get to drag old demons up just to be a bitch cos some things are fucking
private
, alright? And if I ain't allowed to ever talk about it again then you ain't allowed neither cos what me and him done is none of your fucking business."

"Get inside the house," Phil says, deadly cold. "The neighbours can hear you."

 

"So fucking let them hear, sadsack net curtain twitchers. GET A LIFE, YOU PRISSY OLD BITCHES!"

Phil punches him hard in the jaw. Lindsay reacts before he thinks and breaks Phil's nose. Olly jumps away but trips over a carved pumpkin and goes sprawling on his arse on the lawn. Valentine's mother appears from nowhere and slams the front door on them all. All that in no more than three seconds.

"Come home," Lindsay says quietly. Valentine's grey and black make-up is smudged and diluted, nothing as obvious as tear tracks but the redness of his eyes gives it away. As much as he's been shouting, he looks more upset than angry. Some strange haunted shadow seems to be hanging over him again, like it sometimes used to when he was very young and begging Lindsay to hit him to scare it away, and he doesn't want to face it any more so he steps around Valentine and goes back down the garden path clutching his throbbing knuckles. After a moment he hears the heavy clomp of Valentine's boots behind him, and then Olly's clicking cuban heels as well, but he doesn't look back because he doesn't want to see Valentine's dad's face streaming with blood from his mashed nose.

"Bev!" he's shouting at the top of his massive lungs, hammering hard on the front door with his fat fist and ringing the bell over and over. "Come on, love, let me in, I never started nothing! I ain't got no shoes on!"

Valentine's laughing helplessly by the time they reach the cars, trying to do it quietly behind his hand. "I like her when she ain't always wasted. She well tells him off all the time, he ain't got a chance. He's sleeping in the garage tonight, I bet."

"Are you bleeding?" Lindsay asks. He finds Valentine's hand and pulls him under a streetlamp, turning his chin up with his fingers so he can see. "No, just swelling."

"Yeah. Bruises all round tonight, hey?"

"Hm," Lindsay murmurs vaguely, because he doesn't know what else to say. Olly's still standing there just outside the gate, pigeontoed and shamefaced, and he talks to him instead because even that is easier than dealing with Valentine just now. "Did you break your arse?"

"Ripped my tail a bit."

 

"Good."

Valentine's watching them both, nibbling on his black painted thumbnail and looking troubled. "I'm gonna hug my friend now," he says to Lindsay. "You don't have to like it. You don't have to believe I don't wanna fuck him. Feel what you want but it won't make me stop."

"Fine."

He leans against the car and lights a cigarette, keeping his eyes on the ghostly plume of smoke and the cracks in the kerbstones and the nighttime green of the privet leaves, but he looks up eventually because... he's not sure why. He can't help it. Valentine is towering over Olly, Olly's heels aren't nearly as big. They're hugging and talking quietly, a private ear-whispered conversation he's not allowed a part of. It's alright. It'll have to be, because the alternative might as well be death. They break apart after a while and Olly gives him a sort of half-smile and awkward wave as he gets into his own car and drives away.

"Do you wanna talk?" Valentine says tentatively. Lindsay holds his lungful of smoke and hands over the cigarette so Valentine can have the last few drags. Phil is still bellowing at the front door. Obviously he doesn't care
that
much about what the neighbours think.

"No," Lindsay says, blowing the smoke out through his nose. "Do you?"

"No." "Good." "Do you just wanna go home?" "Yes." "Can I drive?" "No."

He wishes he'd said yes just a couple of minutes into the drive. If Valentine was driving then Lindsay could fake being asleep just so they didn't have to force chatter to make the silence less agonising, but as it is they just sit there for the half an hour it takes to get back to Dulwich and listen to each other breathe. Valentine keeps taking extra deep breaths as if he's about to say something, but the words never actually make it past his lips. Not a single word is spoken the whole way back.

The darkness in the house is cloying and suffocating. Lindsay wanders round switching lamps on while Valentine rummages through the booze cabinet and starts drinking neat vodka in girlish little sips straight from the bottle. "You want some?" he says. The first words since Hampstead.

"No."
"You want a whiskey and ginger or something?"
"No. You'll miss your band."
"I got their CDs. It's alright. Don't feel like it no more, anyway."

"Mm." Lindsay goes to sit down on the couch, suddenly exhausted. "Actually, can I have that whiskey?"

"Yeah. Anything in it?"
"Ice?"
"Alright."

He's got his eyes closed, just listening to the tinkle of glass and ice and the splash of pouring liquids. He's not really
tired
, just wiped out and not in the mood for facing up to all this old insanity that's just been kicked up around them like a dust storm. Things would be so much easier if they could all just
forget
, but how do you do that? He's living with the man who got his best friends killed on a petty vengeful whim, and they creep around the fact like an unexploded bomb.

"Lindsay," Valentine says quietly. Lindsay makes himself open his eyes. "I done your drink."

"Come and sit with me." The burn of the whiskey and the cool wet ice wakes him up a bit, and he starts curling his fingers very gently in Valentine's tangled black hair when he sits down. Valentine sighs, a tiny little breath of a sound, and leans back into his touch. "I didn't know you'd told him
everything
."

"All of it. Even the horrible shit things. I didn't think it mattered, I never thought you'd come back. I wouldn't've blamed you, neither." "It doesn't matter."

"It fucking
does
matter, are you mental? I used to think about it all the time. I used to get nightmares cos I kept seeing that man I shot in my dreams. Like I couldn't stop remembering how much blood come out of him, I couldn't stop thinking how fucking lucky it is I'm such a useless shot cos I aimed in his guts. I wanted him dead for hurting you. But I
swear
, I mean it, I swear to god, on Dory's life, anything you want, I
swear
I never meant for Ty and Danny to get hurt. And it weren't fair Olly bringing it up like that, like turning it all into some shitty thing what don't even matter, just like 'oh yeah my bessie's fine and yours ain't' like it don't even matter cos it does." He can't seem to stop now he's started, vomiting out words like he's got violent food poisoning. "My mum and dad wanted me to go to some therapist cos I stayed over loads after Dory was born and I woke them up just as much as she did cos of my bad dreams. They said maybe I had post-traumatic stress disorder from getting kidnapped and it needed dealing with but how could I tell them what really happened? Like 'oh no I weren't
actually
kidnapped, it was just a scam cos I hated you and didn't think you even cared enough to pay up, oh yeah and by the way, you know that boyfriend I just broke up with? Wait til you hear
this
...'"

He drinks from his vodka bottle again, leaving a greasy smudge of black around the rim, but his hand is trembling and he spills some from the corner of his mouth. Lindsay chases the drip with his fingertip, smearing the make-up beneath, but he doesn't say anything. He doesn't know
what
to say, but Valentine's doing enough talking for both of them.

"Olly knows everything, I had to tell someone cos it was splitting me open, I was going out my mind. Cos I know it's all my fault, even if it turned out worse than I meant it's still my fault, even if they started it. Olly says it ain't my fault really cos if I got bullied my whole life and never done nothing... like everyone's got a breaking point, right? And it's like wrong place wrong time, Ty ripping my monkey was just the little thing what pushed it just too far, and I weren't getting back at
him
, I was getting back at Darrell for making me and Olly run round giving bags of coke to people when we was like twelve years old and battering us cos he thought we nicked some money when really they just never gave us enough, or like getting back at Steven Ambrose for pissing up my back at Download just cos he didn't like me, or my mum and dad for everything. That ain't an excuse, just like an explanation. It don't make it okay, it won't ever be okay and I don't know what to do cos even when me and you ain't fighting, even when everything's good and people think we're like this perfect happy couple, it's still just
there
and it's never going away. And I know you said never talk about it ever again but that ain't working cos not talking don't make it go away and I love you so fucking
much
, and I don't know what to do cos it was all a mess before, me and you were proper screwed in the head and like I
thought
at the time it don't matter if you're crazy if you're with someone who's crazy in the opposite way cos you still fit together like Aristophanes said, but I don't wanna be crazy no more. And me and you keep on talking and talking but we ain't talking about nothing what
matters
, and it don't matter if I love you and you love me cos I can't do this if we just keep on pretending this massive elephant ain't there doing a big shit in the middle of the room."