Stockholm Syndrome 3 - No Beginning, No End (23 page)

Lindsay laughs a bit at that, not like he thinks it's funny but just a quiet, disbelieving little noise. "You're the one with all the stitches."

"Yeah. It looks quite cool really, I was watching them sew me up. Like this big triangle flap of skin. I'm gonna get a wicked scar like an arrowhead, I might get 'this way up' tattooed under it when it's better."

"Oh good, you
are
alright."

 

"Yeah. Took a lot of bullets to bring down Bonnie and Clyde, hey?"

 

"Mm."

He turns his hand over in Lindsay's, sliding their fingers together properly and feeling the damp heat of his palm. There's got to be a key to turn somewhere, something to bring Lindsay back and wake him up and make him alright. "I'm allowed home tomorrow," he tries, murmuring as low as he can even though there's nobody else in the room. "Told you I wouldn't stick my kidneys or nothing." Already it feels far away, like a dream or an ancient memory of something that happened when you were drunk. He can't remember the sharp pain of it, but he can remember the slight resistance when he drove the flick knife into his skin and out the back, the wet sound it made when he took a deep breath for courage and yanked the blade up and out, tearing that huge red triangle into his side. It wasn't deep enough to cause any proper trouble; he was clear-headed enough to make sure the cut was shallow, like skinning instead of stabbing, but that moment of shocked pain between driving the knife in and tearing it upwards, when he had to fight down sick and talk himself into following it through, felt longer than his whole lifetime.

"I can't stand being in hospitals," Lindsay says. His voice sounds small and strange, completely alien. He
never
sounds this afraid and unsure.

"Would you rather fix me yourself with a damp flannel and some sticky plasters?"

"Shut up."
"Hospitals help."

"I know. I just hate them. Everything. The bad coffee machines and how the corridors are always painted some ugly colour and nurses' squeaky shoes and even if
you're
alright there's still a hundred other people dying under this roof right now."

Pip doesn't know what to say to that. He's exhausted, his brain doesn't feel like functioning any more. "Yeah but people die every day, you can't mourn them all else you'll lose your mind. I'm alright and you're alright and we ain't been arrested and what else matters?"

"I miss my dad."

That twists his stomach a bit, underlining the throbbing sensation along the stitched inverted V. "Babe, you know you're allowed to talk to me about him at home, right? Not just when I'm in a hospital bed?"

"I know. It's easier to forget at home. It doesn't matter, it's stupid. Do you need anything?"

"Lindsay," Pip says sharply, and Lindsay stops where he is for a second, half out of his seat, then collapses back down with a heavy, trembling sigh.

"What?"
"I need you to talk to me sometimes."
"I talk to you."

"If something's bothering you. Ever. Even if it's something little and stupid, I don't care, just if you're sad sometimes and there's
anything
I can do so you don't feel so shit-"

Lindsay interrupts. "It's nothing. I was just talking to your dad earlier. I'm tired. Don't listen."

 

"I want to."

It's like trying to get blood out of a stone or wine out of a water bottle. When Lindsay closes up like this, trying to prise him open only makes it worse. You've just got to be still and quiet, lull him into feeling like there's nobody else around and it's okay to talk to yourself, although he's not mad or stupid so he knows it's really not. Eventually he starts, slow and low, and Pip presses clumsy little kisses on the back of his hot hand to urge him on.

"I didn't kill my dad, I didn't fetch him the pills or feed them to him, but I was there when he did it. He always said he would if he ever got really ill, even years before he
got
ill. It was over Christmas sometime when he told me he'd stolen the pills and he was thinking about it, but he said he wouldn't do it if I didn't want him to."

The sicky feeling is back, and filthy crawling memories he wishes he could rub out like pencil marks: Grandad George in the hospice for the last few weeks, withered to hardly anything and too delirious to know he had visitors, never mind to know who they were. He wonders what he would have done if the choice was his. It's not so difficult, really.

"That ain't fair, putting it on you," he says quietly. He traces his fingertip across the creases on the back of Lindsay's knuckles. "No, I'm glad. If he just
did
it... my mum didn't know I knew and it cracked her up thinking he did it all on his own."

"Didn't you ever tell her?"
"How could I?"
"Spose."
"It was the sixth of January. Nice way to top off Christmas." "Is that how come you hate Christmas so much?"

"Slade is why I hate Christmas so much. This is why I hate hospitals."

 

"But what about nice things? Babies getting born, or when people get told they're alright now cos the test's come back clear?"

Lindsay reaches up to start curling a strand of Pip's hair gently around his finger, and he clears his throat before he says anything else. "I know. Don't listen, I told you. I'm being stupid. It was twenty-three years ago, I should be over it by now."

And that's an attitude he
hates
, he always hated it, all those people who ever told him to pull himself together and stop snivelling, stop living in the past, stop going on and on about your grandad cos who really gives a fuck about some dead old man anyway?
ME
, he always wanted to yell in their stupid faces.
I care and if you knew him you'd care too
.

"You shouldn't ever get over it," he says. It comes out more fiercely than he meant it to, and Lindsay looks startled. "Yeah, okay, remember
nice
things like him teaching you your guitar and holidays you went on and bedtime stories and stuff, but if you got over him dying that's like not caring when you still do. And even if it was horrible and it still bothers you, ain't it good he trusted you that much and you was close enough for him to say it when he didn't have no one else? Cos... he must've been scared. And he told you, and he must've felt better just saying it, just knowing he weren't the only person in the world thinking them thoughts."

"I don't think about it much. It's not like I saw him do it or anything. I went to the toilet and he took some. Bit later I went to get a drink and he took some more. I just sat with him after that. He told me stories about courting my mum, then he fell asleep, then he died. It wasn't dramatic. Better than the alternative. He was going to die anyway, at least it was by his own rules and not because he just couldn't help it."

Pip's thinking about that underground garage all those years ago, the revolver with the single remaining bullet and the gun he stole from the security guard, and how he selfishly wanted to shoot himself first so he wouldn't have to see Lindsay dead, but he was bleeding that much Pip wasn't sure he'd be able to hold the gun steady. Probably not. He's staring into space glumly now, wandering somewhere in the past to a time when Pip was three years old and hundreds of miles away from him, and the biggest thing he had to worry about was how frequently he and Olly got lollipops stuck in their hair.

"I think you're dead brave," he says softly. Lindsay raises his chin a bit to show he heard, but he doesn't look up. "If I was dying anyway and I knew it was gonna hurt and take ages then I'd wanna get out too, but not on my own."
"Me too."

"What, are we making another big romantic suicide pact?"

Lindsay finally cracks a smile at that – a tiny, brittle smile, but a smile all the same. "So much more romantic than a bunch of cheap wilted flowers from that shop downstairs."

"I dunno, I'd quite like some flowers..."

 

***

Lindsay goes home in the morning to fetch his car, and when Pip walks carefully out the doors and out to the pick-up bay he can't see in the back windows for roses and lilies and carnations and orchids and flowers he doesn't know the names of, all in a rainbow mish-mash of colours and crinkly cellophane water bags.

"Didn't know what you liked so I got one of everything," Lindsay says, striving for casual and failing when his voice trembles nervously. Valentine just laughs, amazed and delighted and amused, and all the way home he holds Lindsay's hand even when he needs to use the gearstick.

18.
January 2015

It's so easy and there's so little fuss. Even Lindsay can't be selfconscious and embarrassed by just going into a poky little office and signing some papers. He looks wonderful, he always does, even in his old soft brown cords and a blue stripy cardigan.
No tailcoats
, he said sternly when he suggested it, after first insisting on no guests, no flowers, no ceremony, and no party.
No top hats. And NO dresses
. Pip's got his favourite red skinnies on instead, a loose black silky shirt, a knotted string of pearls and his silliest white platform knee-high boots. It's partly to be a brat because he doesn't like being told what he's allowed and not allowed to wear, but partly because...

"The first time we ever went out to the pub," Lindsay says, tapping a couple of cigarettes out of his case and lighting them both in his mouth like an old film star before handing one to Pip. "I've not forgotten."

"I thought you might." He's surprised and pleased, but it hardly matters. It's like dropping a thimbleful of water into the Pacific; adding more when there's already so much doesn't make any difference. "Just testing you."

"How could I forget? Talk about being forcibly hauled out of the closet."

 

"It's good for you. The closet's rubbish. People need to stop wasting the space and fill it with clothes instead."

 

"Speaking of. Honeymoon in Topshop?"

 

"You're amazing," Pip says, and takes the cigarette out of Lindsay's mouth so he can kiss him.

 

***